At a current convention, a fellow Ignatian educator and I have been strolling to the cafeteria for lunch, caught up in a passionate dialog about all our large, unbelievable, pie-in-the-sky instructional concepts. We have been on fairly a roll. We have been fixing issues left and proper and spelling out all the steps of our excellent plans. When we arrived at the lunch line, he turned to me and mentioned as a method of capping off our dialog, “If I only ruled the world, right?” And then he added, “But I don’t, and thank God for that!”
His offhand comment left an impression in my thoughts. Ever since, every time I discover myself going off on an “I just know better” tangent, I ultimately minimize myself off by saying, “If I ruled the world…but I don’t, and thank God for that!”
I am by nature a passionate and inventive particular person. When I get on a roll problem-solving, I can actually get on a roll. I can go on and on about all the concepts in my head and inadvertently elevate myself to the final problem-solver. In flip, when I get offended at a way of continuing that somebody has launched that I don’t agree with, I can go on and on about how I would do it in a different way and the way I would do it higher.
Maybe my response is only a consequence of being human. Maybe it’s only a consequence of being this explicit human. But it’s not likely reflective of how I really feel deep-down inside. The fact is, irrespective of how inventive or passionate I am, irrespective of how offended or unsettled I get by one thing, I don’t actually consider deep-down inside that I have all the solutions.
I know that it’s typically the method I can come throughout, nonetheless. Perhaps it’s the method that many of us can come throughout when all we actually need is to be an element of one thing worthy. Maybe it’s the method all of us have the potential to return throughout when our want to make a distinction, to make use of our voice, and to be an element of one thing nice can now not be contained.
My buddy’s maybe fairly random remark is now a everlasting half of my internal monologue (and typically my outer one as nicely). I repeat it as a strategy to floor myself in who I am in the deepest components of me. I repeat it to remind myself that, of course, I know there are good individuals already doing good and worthy work, and I am blessed each time I get to do good and worthy work alongside them.
And I repeat it to remind myself that there’s all the time somebody in cost—and it’ll by no means be me, and it’ll by no means be you.
If I dominated the world…
Well, I don’t. God does. And thank God for that!