Deserving It

John Adams, when asked once about the outcome of the Revolutionary War, said the following:

"The Events of War are uncertain: We cannot insure Success, but We can deserve it."

We cannot insure success, but we can deserve it... what a thought. It made me think immediately of my girls. There is nothing more special on this earth than the adoring looks that your little ones give you. Dads of little girls will back me on that one for sure, but I suspect the feeling is universal. It's sad to think that those looks will probably fade and become less frequent as the girls get older and their dad becomes a geeky old man that can't possibly understand their struggles. I wish I could somehow capture the looks that I get now and preserve them for those moments down the road, but, alas, I cannot.

Here's what I can do, though - instead of worrying about getting those adoring looks from my little angels, how about I just make sure that, when they do come, I deserve them.

I'm not sure it's possible, to be perfectly honest, but it will be a noble and worthy endeavor to try.

Building Up and Tearing Down

We had a meeting at work yesterday that lasted most of the afternoon. Like most all-afternoon meetings, it had its high points, and it had its low points. One thing that was said stuck with me. It was in regard to reputation risk, and it went like this: “It takes a lot of good choices to build up a reputation, but it only takes one bad one to ruin it.”

That’s an impactful statement.

I’ve thought this very thing before about pastors. These guys spend an entire adult lifetime devoting themselves to God's work, building up a stellar reputation. And despite the innumerable honorable, loving, selfless things that they did to gain that reputation, they’re always only one affair away from never preaching again. It’s a brutal and seemingly unbalanced truth, but it’s the truth, nonetheless.

This line of thinking made me consider the nature of building up and tearing down in general. Take a skyscraper, for example. Skyscrapers take great skill and planning to construct. The really great ones take a deep understanding of mathematics and geometry just to design soundly, much less to make look nice, and then they take the most skilled laborers in the world to construct. Some of these buildings take many months to complete. And yet, with the right tools, they can be razed to the ground in mere minutes.

A house of cards is no different. Think of the delicate balance that has to be achieved to construct a house of cards. Think of the amazing skill, the sureness of the hands dropping each tiny little piece of pasteboard onto the house. These things take hours of meticulous work to complete. Grueling, meticulous work. Work so hard that only a handful of people in the world are truly “good” at it. But to tear it down? It can be done with a sneeze.

My point is that it takes very little effort to tear things down. Any person can knock over a Jenga tower. Any brat can kick in a sandcastle. Any thug can rough someone up. But to keep the Jenga tower standing… that takes skill, care, and patience. To build a sandcastle takes observation, planning, and time. To heal a broken body takes knowledge, aptitude, and selflessness.

Any fool can tear down; the real skill is in building up.

And this is perhaps most true in matters concerning the spirit. Harsh words are easy to come by. Breaking someone down can be accomplished in seconds, sometimes with only a handful of words.

“You’re fat.”

“Nobody cares.”

“You're such a moron.”

"Who asked you?"

“Why are you even here?”

It’s easy to break down. It's easy to humiliate and embarrass and minimize. That’s why bullies are a dime a dozen – it’s not rocket science. Any fool with a double digit IQ can belittle and break.

You want to be impressive? Go build someone up. Make them feel important. Let them know that they have value. Let them know that, to at least one person in the world, they matter.


That is very, very hard to do, and I'm convinced that only those willing to commit themselves to it for a lifetime will ever truly be good at it.