“It feels so good, it can’t be wrong” and “Listen to your heart” are little summaries of pop-culture’s philosophy on how to guide your life. What if it’s wrong? Let’s see how a baby and dummies can teach us about this.
If there’s one word that can summarise a prime motivator for my son right now, it is “milk”. Since hunger is perhaps the greatest discomfort so far in his young experience, this is unsurprising. We have had unfortunate instances where the “hunger monster” has pounced on him while we were on the road. Here’s the problem: it would be unsafe for us to take him out of his baby capsule while driving. This has sometimes forced us to pull aside to tend to his “snack attack”.
At other times, we had no choice but to keep going and try to get home as soon as possible. This would have him crying all the way home. During some of those times, his mother has resorted to using her little finger as a pacifier for him. This resulted in the expected suck reflex kicking in and him settling down, or so we thought. It soon became obvious to the young master that this wasn’t what he signed up for. Like a protest that he wasn’t getting a return on his investment, he’d grizzle and whinge between the involuntary bouts of sucking. The last time this happened, he stopped sucking altogether and just protested. If he could talk, I’m sure he’d say, “What is this? I’m refusing to suck, I’m no dummy!”
Smart boy. May we like him have perception enough to override our “natural instincts” by having a view of the bigger picture of what’s going on. 🙂
Thankfully, God hasn’t left us to the mercy of our impulses but has given us His Word and His Spirit to guide our path.
