It’s always easier to tell someone else what they should be doing than to do it yourself. When we’re speaking, the solution is clear and apparent. Obviously we’re not the ones having to deal with the other person’s situation. We cannot possibly have the same view because we are not in the other person’s shoes, so to speak, and aren’t experiencing the thoughts and emotions of the other person. It’s as though our advice magically is complete at the snap of the fingers.
I had a moment like this last night. About an hour after I finished my post on living light and keeping the bare essentials, I had sent my dad a text message to tell him that I’d try to give in a call the next day, since I was tired and busy packing late at night. Well, he decided to call me and as I was on the phone with him, I explained how I was having a difficult time deciding on whether I should ship my things to my sister in Seattle, store my things near my friend’s place in New Jersey, or drive it to another friend’s house in Maryland. I ran through all the factors and points of consideration and still had no concrete answer. My inclination was just to move all of my stuff into a storage unit nearby, because this seemed to be the easiest and least stressful option at the time. My dad took a different stance.
My dad advised me to ship my things to where my sister was for a number of reasons. Despite what he was saying I kept going on and on about what if I needed this or that. I was also very attached to my bed and had a hard time getting rid of such a high ticket item. After listening to me ramble he proceeded to mention the points I had just made in my entry an hour earlier: if you need something you can always buy it again, you don’t need as much as you think, and that you shouldn’t keep things you’ll probably never use. At that moment I couldn’t help reflecting upon what I had said to people about Living Light just a short while before that conversation, and I realized that it was much easier to tell others how to rid themselves of excess baggage than to rid my life of things I didn’t need. It’s so easy for me to tell you about how to decide whether or not you should keep something, but when it came time for me to get rid of things I wanted to just keep EVERYTHING.
I ended up deciding to donate and get rid of most of my belongings. Standing there all night and most of the next day was not only a physically gruelling process, but also a very emotional one. I found a reason to justify keeping everything. Then at some point in the night something clicked in my mind. I was getting rid of stuff that I had been hauling around for the past six years and never used. Suddenly, it became easy to just drop things and move on with my life. In fact, it was a very necessary and liberating experience, but I digress.
We should live our lives the way in which we think others should live their lives. Our words become meaningless if we do not act upon them and we lose our credibility. If someone was telling you to try a new dish that you weren’t accustomed to eating and he or she was saying how amazing it was, but refused to even taste it, wouldn’t you be suspicious of its contents? Or if someone was trying to sell you one brand of a product, but used a different brand, wouldn’t you wonder why? In other words, it is difficult for a “salesman” to sell a product he does not feel strongly about.
Luckily, when giving people advice we don’t necessarily have the same kind of pressure. It’s highly improbable that we can be consistent 100% of the time. Even machines aren’t always accurate and need repair. Heck, that’s why there’s a quality control department! Still, in the words of a cab driver I met a few weeks ago, “What is a belief if you do not live by it? It is nothing.”
