Sunday, August 6, 2017

Amateurs and Experts - It struck me the other day as I was reading report after report of things happening in the world that everyone had something to say about everything. Every single person needs to have the last word, and it doesn’t matter if they’re actually telling the truth or not. The only requirement anymore seems to be that what they say should be perceived as true. Everyone wants to be an expert. Silence is perceived as a lack of intelligence rather than having nothing substantive to offer, so no one is willing to just shut up. They want people to believe every word they say, and accept it as accurate, even if they have done no research or made any effort to verify the information they put out. It no longer seems to matter if a statement is factually true anymore. It is simply accepted as truth if it is repeated often enough. So here’s my take on it all.

We are all amateurs in life
Though experts we pretend to be
Yet every day dawns anew
With nothing yet to know.

Pretenders are we
Who recognize neither awe nor terror
For experts think that Kings they be
With no authority in contradiction

Where we see nothing greater than ourselves
We seemingly have no fear
But at the end of that road
There is neither love nor beauty seen

In our sole regard of our own image
We fail to see the visage in whose image we are made
We never leave the mirror
We never sense our form dissipating through the absence in our eyes

We will always fall
We always have
Yet some will rise
And some will lie

Some will kill
Some will die
Some will wallow
Some stand tall

But in the end
It’s always dust and ashes
And sometimes Heaven
And sometimes Hell

All your expertise is useless
In the end
The answer to the real question
Is never yours to know or give

Our lives are always
Ultimately in the hands
Of the One who knows us best
And loves us nonetheless
The first and final question
Is the one we seldom answer truthfully
The one we start our lives with
The one we answer daily to our own satisfaction

Are you Expert
Managing your own salvation
Holding your fate
In your own inadequate hands, or

Are you Amateur
Falling as you learn
Being lifted when you fail

Higher than when you started?

©Dan Bode 2017

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