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