Buttons

Everyone has their pet peeves. Other people do certain things which just drive us batty. Sometimes they really are that much of an annoyance or inconvenience... but not often.

For me, I find, often through unfortunately-delayed introspection, that most of my pet peeves are based on the things that I hate within myself. I cannot stand bad whistling, which I assume is due to the inability of my own lips to form the notes which I imagine in my mind. I cringe when I see people digging digging their own intellectual/social graves with various small but ultimately damaging behaviours. Rarely does my annoyance/anger at their behaviour equal anywhere near the total amount that I am bothered, simply because I can see in them, that which I so often see, and hate, in myself. Too many eyes have glazed over while I spoke; Too many have been driven away by a ramble or rant on a topic that really needed not much more than a sentence or two; And too many feelings have been hurt by unnecessary, and usually incorrect, statements of my own opinion as fact.

I hate watching others make the same mistakes as me; But, as always, everything is easier to see and understand from an outside perspective. I don't see my mistakes until after I've made them.


I am somewhat comforted by this idea though; It, as with most observations of our very human state, is easily scaled up to the universal/spiritual level.
C.S. Lewis was the first and last person to ever explain eternity to me in a way that made sense and didn't trivialize who God is or what He did/does/will-do (three words and three tenses that, in his description, become meaningless). Though I'll never do it justice in a quote (go read Mere Christianity), the key idea is that God views time from outside the timeline. He sees the beginning, the end, and everything in between. One can't say "God knows what will happen" as if God were at our point and is simply looking ahead; Instead, God sees everything that happens and the linear progression is a triviality, but of course this is hard to express with all of our time-based descriptions. I play, I love, I sin, I choose, I fall, I grow, I swim, I eat, I draw, I read... If you're anything like me, these fragments are uncomfortable because they lack the linear time context that we are so used to.

As friends, we have the unique privilege to experience the 'lite' version of God's view. We know what our friends have done, we can see what they're doing (and know them well enough to know why), and we can usually see what's up ahead much more accurately than they ever could. But that still holds to linearity, and I think is impossible for us to view the situation in anything beyond this. God sees, as a whole, everything that our life encompasses. I don't think we can reach that point, but at least we can be used as an outside viewer to help our friends with the choices that they make. Unfortunately it is tough, if not impossible, to look inwardly with the same scope; I think this is why I/we have pet peeves. We see friends making the same mistakes but yet not being able to see or understand what they are actually doing. I suppose that God feels the same way (but without the associated guilt of making all of the same mistakes first, of course) as He watches us do all of the stupid things we do. If we would just listen, He would have told us that it wasn't a good idea. He may have even told us why, though, as the Almighty, He does have he distinct advantage of not having to justify everything that He says or does ("because I said so" is a valid answer for the Omniscient/Omnipresent/Omnipotent).

[Note: This was a mind dump. At some points I felt that I had something going, but I have a feeling that the train-of-thought went off the tracks (off the trestle, in to the gorge, and in to a smoking heap of its own wreckage)]