Construction

My wife and I have been remodeling our basement. It’s been a lot of fun! Don’t get me wrong, we have had challenges and we have both wanted to pull out our hair. The process of creating has been a blast.

Our parents have helped us throughout our project. It’s been fun to work with them. Both of our families are creators and working with them to create something in our basement fills me with joy.

Creating is construction. You take materials and construct something out of them. I think to construct is to work closely with God. He is the creator of the material we use to construct. It’s a holy moment when you realize you are making something with your hands that God made with His hands.

Here’s to creating and to having more moments to participate in God’s creating work.

Cynism Gets a Bad Rap

It is easy to blame bad attitudes and dissatisfaction on a a cynical spirit. Everyone writes about how we need to stop being cynics and instead have health skepticism that leads us to want to change.

I’ll bite.

I’m skeptical because I am a cynic. I quickly try to find all the problems with an idea or situation. I try to “kill” it quickly. I am slow to believe it.

I think that the Google Team, Project X that does moonshot ideas, is full of cynics. They quickly try to kill ideas, make them fail, and poke holes in each others theories so that they don’t waste time on ideas that don’t hold their own.

It’s brilliant. If an idea can’t handle someone trying to kill it, it’s probably a great idea or at least the step needed to get to the next phase which is the great idea.

We should be cynics so that we can stop fooling ourselves in good ideas and go for the great one.

At the end when cynicism hasn’t been able to totally kill the idea, you need to embrace it.

Otherwise you aren’t a cynic, you’re just a stick in the mud.

z