Working on learning how to tone down and turn down the volume!

Seems like all my life I’ve always had someone telling me I need to calm down, back off, or chill out. Easier said than done and that’s what I am thinking about on this April Fool’s Day, on this Wednesday, April 1, 2009. Before I get worked up over trying not to get worked up I wanted to share a funny story I heard from a fellow the other day. He said, “If a man goes out into the woods and unloads all that he has to say but there’s no woman to hear him, does that still make him wrong?” Okay, so maybe it’s not that funny to you but think about it and maybe it will get that way. Okay, back to the subject of me trying to tone down my rhetoric and stay cool enough to add a few minutes here and there to my lifespan. Just thinking about it causes my blood to boil! Just joshing. Maybe I was wound a little too tight as a child or perhaps I really do have trouble distinguishing between mountains and molehills but whatever the reason I do tend to be in pursuit mode in almost everything I do.

I had to meet a technician at my home yesterday because of some issues involving our security system and its coexistence with our high speed internet. This young man was quiet, calm, and moved like he is perhaps ninety years old. He walked slow. He talked slow. He worked slow. I wanted to suggest to him that he carry a small mirror with him to check occasionally to see if his breath could fog it up to test whether he was alive or not, but I thought that would be a little over the line so I restrained myself. While he worked, I paced up and down, forth and back, my shoes on that laminate floor sounding like a Fred Astaire tap dance. I also kept up a steady stream of what were likely nonsensical suggestions, questions, and comments to try and move the process along. The good news for him is that my antics had little impact on him and he more or less did his thing, finished, and then he packed up his tools, and made that long slow walk out to his truck. He will probably live to be a very old man but I don’t think I could handle his approach to life.

The other day my wife had to remind me to lower my volume in one of my telephone conversations with a service manager on the same issue. I’m often told I get too carried away in my teaching. Excited and excitable is how it goes most of the time for me. Maybe I suffer from that attention deficit deal but had it long before it was invented, therefore, I don’t qualify for consideration. Much of mine is mental. Hey, maybe that’s why I’ve been called a mental case! My mind does tend to be running on many different tracks at the same time and I can never predict which track will be derailed first. I do know I can do better and I should, within reason. However, in the end, I count the intensity I feel for the things I’m involved in to be part of how God put me together and try to focus it, when I can, on something that will be productive and of value. I just never have wanted one of those Slow Men Working signs sitting next to my desk! Have a great day and whatever your style, slow, medium, or fast, do what you do for the honor and glory of God. Amen. ……….More later.