There are days in my life where I am confronted with extreme temptation. I get the feeling of letting go, putting down the guard and doing whatever I please. I read people who grant themselves permission to do just such every day and I wonder why they can do such things and I can't. The list of things I see is long. Whether it's someone's blog, a co-worker, a person I know from online that isn't blog related, a friend. It's not just the daily junk you see in the news - celebrities who seemingly do whatever they want to in life without and kind of consequences, but it eventually catches up with them, too.
This was one of those days. I've had strange emails coming from people I don't know asking to do things - how they got my email I have no idea. I think of all the things I'm not doing that I could be.
It happens. The mind is a battlefield. It is if you want to try to keep it pure, anyway. If you don't care what goes on in there, then there is no battle - you've already lost and are a prisoner, shackled and chained whether you want to believe it or not.
I come back to my senses eventually and fortunately do not actually ACT on those impulses. It's always a relentless battle, though. I look at the people who do whatever they please, say whatever they please, etc - and realize that many of these people's lives are mere existence. No real life, just a daily grind of doing the same thing without any more expectation than to gratify themselves in one way or the other. The excesses with which these people live are beyond imagination.
I wonder about people who can simply mouth off to anyone at a moment's notice and think nothing of it. I wonder about people whose goal it is in life is to go around and challenge anything and everything that anyone says - nothwithstanding the fact that that person hasn't got a clue. Maybe in some areas they know something, but no-one is an expert in everything, only God can make that claim, yet these people will argue with you and even start to attempt to humiliate you simply because you state something you believe, or that you KNOW for a fact.
The I'm-right-and-you're-always-wrong-crowd. Seems like the blogosphere is FULL of people like that.
I have to say that I am at a loss about situations going on at a specific blogging host. I don't hate the place but the incredible amount of hate, anger and then extreme carnality leaves me at a loss. People seem to feed on that stuff, especially controversy. Here, my mind is racked with trying to find stuff for the IRS and what did I do with it; keeping tenants in the house and making sure that I have paying tenants to boot. Paying for the house and all the bills. Trying to beautify the property and keep it maintained. My work life and attempting to keep myself pure. I'm not a lily-white angel, but I'm certainly attempting to lead a clean life, I utterly fail at times but that's the down-side to be human.
I do wonder how reading all of that stuff on a daily basis is helping me at all.
Well, I don't blame other people for my problems in life, unless of course someone has done something intentional and then I can say something about it. I also don't blame people for temptation that comes against me. We are all tempted from time to time with something - whatever your weaknesses are, it's guaranteed that some wonderful opportunity to fall into that weakness will come at you with unprecedented accuracy in it's aim at your mind, soul and heart. It's so easy to just give in, isn't it?
Yet, if you fight the battle and win, it's so wonderful to come out the other side and look back at the personal, inner battles that you conquered.
Today's stuff is over, literally. I had to sit back and start giving serious thought to what was going on inside of me, what triggered it and how to not let that happen again. The last part of that may mean some extreme decisions, really, on my online activities, and more pointedly, blogging. How can blogging tempt you, you say? How does anyone get tempted? It isn't my own blogging, this is pretty tame stuff comparitively speaking. That's the point, I think, without going into it too far here.
ben
