name
Donovan Koh Jian Ting
gender
Male
age
20
dob
14 March 1986
blood type
O
horoscope
Pices
location
Singapore
ocupation
National Service -_-
family
Family of 5 Mom & Dad, Brother and Sis I'm the youngest^^ Love them all^^
loves
Bikes, Spacious Room
hates
Yucky Food
sports i play
Slacker
listens to
Any Songs thats nice, mostly Rock, Hip Hop, R&B
email
Oxygenerated@yahoo.com.sg
msn
???
icq
???
copyright
catchastar.blogspot.com
2004 All Right Reserved
Saturday, May 14, 2005
Our Enslaving Expectations
Commercials play to our restlessness, and they even help to create it. If they succeed, we feel a need for their product by the time their pitch is over. We want better breath, smoother hands, a nicer smell, or a bigger burger. One classic potato chip commercial shows a boy boarding a bus with a big bag of their crunchies. As the boy keeps reaching for another chip, he claims, “Bet you can’t eat just one.” Hearing the irresistible crunch, the bus driver grabs “just one.” Of course, he keeps munching, until finally his hat is full of those habit-forming chips. By the end of the ad, everyone on the bus is chomping and singing, “No one can eat just one.” That’s amazing, when you consider that you can’t even get two people to speak to each other on the buses I ride! But the advertisers are experts on human motivation. They want to create in us the appetite for more. Even without those commercials, we are driven by that appetite. “More” is usually perceived as the answer to our restlessness, the “if-only-I-had’s” of life. We convince ourselves that there’s nothing wrong with us that wouldn’t be cured by more time, more house, more money, more friends, more job, more clothes, more excitement, more comforts. Then we get the “two aspirin” form of a big raise, a dream home, a partner, a lighter schedule, or a standing ovation—only to find that the “headache” of restlessness soon returns. The unsettling truth is that more is never enough! Discontentment destroys any possibility of personal peace. It condemns us to the pressure cooker of guaranteed restlessness. Conventional wisdom tells us, “A man’s reach should always exceed his grasp.” A commitment to excellence, to service, to personal purity should keep us reaching. We are, by nature, pursuers. That’s why God calls us to pursue peace! But much modern stress results from the wrong pursuits—misplaced discontentment. We are enslaved by expectations that cannot be satisfied. They are intrinsically frustrating. These “drivers” come in three forms, and they keep us on edge because they keep us reaching for more. 1. POSSESSION EXPECTATIONSPlato commented insightfully on our possession expectations: Poverty consists not in the decrease of one’s possession but in the increase of one’s greed. There is always another “thing” you don’t have! And the increase of things only creates an appetite for more. There was a time we looked forward to owning one TV, but then we needed two. Once we were thrilled with an apartment of our own, but the thrill was soon replaced with a hankering for a little house of our own. Eventually the little house was too little. It would take a big house to do the trick. And a swimming pool would be nice too. Our “poverty” really is, in Plato’s words, “the increase of one’s greed.” Dinner out at McDonald’s was a once-special treat—now it’s routine. Tonight it will take a fancy restaurant to provide the same special treat. It seems only yesterday that an air conditioner was the luxury of the rich—today I’ve got to have one. Yesterday’s luxury has become today’s necessity. Life’s goodies are truly good when God provides them in His way and in His time. They are enslaving when we demand them—when we expect them. Possession expectations will keep pushing us past the fragile limits of peace. 2. PEOPLE EXPECTATIONSWe live in a state of chronic frustration because the significant others in our lives don’t measure up. Or can’t measure up. Author James Dobson points out that while the baby is on the way, we profess only to want a child who is normal. But from birth on, we want a superkid! We want for him either the life we didn’t have or a replay of the life we did have. Somehow, their grades, their friends, their style are never good enough. We focus on what they need to improve, seldom on what they have achieved. So our children are quickly caught up with us in the whirlpool of more. Marriages become battlefields because our partners continually disappoint us. Weaknesses are magnified; strengths are forgotten—just the reverse of the courtship process. We are expecting more of Prince Charming or Cinderella, and they may be getting tired of never being enough. These people expectations can make a person incurably restless with his work. No working conditions, no boss is what you really want. And the dissatisfaction syndrome can reach right into the church too. There is ultimately something wrong with every pastor, every leader. We end up expecting of people around us a perfection that belongs only to God. If you are not satisfied with those around you, you are probably even less satisfied with yourself. We compare ourselves to standards of parenting, partnering, or producing that are unattainable, and can never relax because we are never good enough. Marsha grabbed me after church one day to pour out her broken heart over her prodigal son. She had tried so hard and done everything she could, and he was walking on the wild side of life. As we talked, it became evident that Marsha had an unreasonably high standard for her son, one he could never quite hit. I suggested to her that a child who is never good enough may one day stop trying to be. He may choose a rebellious course that will remove any possibility of impossible expectations. Her son had opted out of the demands, only to create a whole new arena of pressure. Marsha began to cry as she revealed the reason she had pushed her son so hard. She had grown up in the brokenness left by an alcoholic father. Her youthful agony made her resolve to be a perfect mother and to have a perfect home. She had walked that tightrope for years, and her son’s struggles always threatened her goals. If he wasn’t good enough, then she wasn’t good enough. She was always reaching for more from him, and from herself. Neither of them could find peace. If our hopes for peace are placed in the hands of imperfect people, they are bound to evaporate. 3. PERFORMANCE EXPECTATIONSPerformance drives us to stressful schedules, sacrifices, and compromises. Our worth becomes identified with our work, and no spot on the mountain is enough. Even the top is unsatisfying, as Alexander the Great discovered when he wept because there were no more worlds to conquer. Amy started high school with the futility of performance expectations. She seemed sad most of the time, so sad that she found herself on the brink of suicide. Although she outgrew those depths of depression, she did not grow much of a smile. The irony of her personal dissatisfaction was that she was a high achiever! She was elected vice president of her school chorus, but she was miserable because she was not president. She ranked second in her class academically, but she chose to look at the one student ahead of her rather than the 300 behind her. The storm in Amy seldom abated because winning was her only option. Whatever our game is, we will lose consistently if we have to win. We aspire to be promoted to the next rung on the company ladder—only to need yet the next promotion before the paint is dry on our new office door. No award, no achievement is ever enough. We punish our bodies, our families, our friends, our sanity to reach for another level of victory. One day this unquenchable appetite for conquest can even violate the marriage covenant. There is the “need” to demonstrate that you are still attractive. The innocent flirtations are tantalizing. You, your spouse, your kids—and even your conquest—end up sacrificed on the ugly altar of adultery. It is stress-driven slavery to always have something to prove. Discontentment runs like a treadmill under our feet. We are always running, pushing for more possessions, more from people, more conquest. There is no rest on a treadmill. Discontentment is the mortal enemy of peace—a deep root of stress and restlessness. Instead, consider the apostle Paul’s equation for contentment: Godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that (1 Tim. 6:6-8).
If You wanna take a look at the whole book Living Peacefully in a stressful world here's the link http://www.rbc.org/ds/hp011/ Take care, bye bye.
Donovan Koh Jian Ting :+:Let us love one another for God is love ~Saranghae~:+: 10:31 PM
