Other Words
Good or bad, love or hate seems to be our mode of life these days. Everyone has to be triggered by something or someone.
The video was about Elon Musk. Someone who is in the news a lot lately. Good or bad, love or hate seems to be our mode of life these days. Everyone has to be triggered by something or someone.
If you don’t like someone you must hate them. If you do like someone you must, by default, hate or love someone else. But wait a minute, I’m from the middle of nowhere and it takes eons to penetrate our defenses.
I would say it’s less than ten years since Elon Musk came onto my horizon. Being curious, I watched the short video and promptly forgot most of what I watched it for. What I came up with is, Elon Musk is from somewhere out there, and he’s smart.
Good thing the video wasn’t long… I guess.
This morning is a beautiful morning, and God wanted to talk to me. I’m praying I get this right because whereas Elon Musk is interesting, God is important. Like the old commercial used to say, When **** speaks, the world listens.
It was a financial advisor’s commercial that aired years ago when we watched television and there were financial advisors running ads—but I forget their names. Still, when God speaks, we who claim to be his servants should listen.
The video about Musk was in some ways bitter-sweet. One of the people talking on it said in school we had other words for people like Elon, like—geek.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Of course, that’s not true. As children, we could pretend the words of others, friends, and or family, wouldn’t hurt us, but they often did. I was never a geek. No one ever accused me of being smart, I just wasn’t popular.
There was the In Group and I wasn’t one of them. That was fine by me. They mostly left me alone. I had friends who, like me weren’t part of the in-group.
I rewatched the video (Bill Gates warns against Elon Musk). I will never remember everything in the video or even much of what I watched. Probably my initial “Elon Musk is from somewhere else and is smart” will be my take away but…
I felt two emotions during the watching. Sadness. “Kids used to follow Elon home from school and throw cans of soda at his head.”
What? Good grief. He had difficulty in his home life and stupid schoolmates as well? But things got better? We would hope they did, but maybe not. He grew up, did quite a few amazing things, had some bad years when things looked bad for him and his enterprises, and then…
He was told to give up. Things were too bad, things were hemorrhaging all over. His electric cars were going bad, his rockets weren’t going to the moon, and his ‘heroes’ threw cans of soda at his head—not quite literally.
But he didn’t give up and now, we have other words for Elon Musk—Words like a genius, a visionary, an entrepreneur.
Some other thoughts in this video are voiced which are kind of against our culture. One thing is, not everyone dances in the same rain. Some people might as well be honest, they will never fit in.
Many years ago a friend’s young daughter was going to college with the idea of becoming a teacher. My friend shared with me that her daughter had been taught in college that a teacher’s job was not to ‘teach’ children, it was to help them learn to conform.
Conform—Oh, I see. It isn’t important for children to know how to read and write, but it is important for them to learn how to line up at the water fountain and follow orders.
I think I’ve always been doomed. Both lining up at the water fountain and following orders have always been a problem for me. Thankfully they didn’t have cans of soda when I was a child.
Matthew 16:
24 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
25 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.
26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
