? Thank you | Main | Today's thought: Thankfulness ?
September 27, 2004
A simple repair
Sometimes it seems that things just don’t go as well as planned. One simple repair turns into an hours-long ordeal. Tonight I was going to listen to some Korean audio material on the internet for class. I clicked on a file to play it, and a message popped up telling me that I had to update my Real Player to continue. So, I clicked on the Update button and that’s when the simple turned into the complex.
Half-way through the installation it locked up and I saw a warning message on my screen that told me I was running dangerously low on hard drive space. So, I clicked on the cleanup button and the Real Player installation disappeared. I got more hard drive space, but by then my Real Audio installation was messed up and I had to re-download and install the whole thing over. Finally after over an hour of messing around, I was able to hear the audio files.
Later I was trying to fix my bike tire and noticed that the repair job I did yesterday actually made the problem worse. I tried to fix it again but when I put air into it the tube ended up ripping along the valve stem and no patch would hold there. Total time spent messing around with the tire: 1.5 hours. A couple simple repairs ate up an entire evening.
When I think about the problems around the world, I think that it would be nice to do a simple repair and move on, but it’s not always that easy. Some people would like to just apply brute force, but when we do that, something is going to break. We may end up replacing what we broke, like buying a new bike tube. We have to search for real solutions to real problems. We cannot just treat the symptoms but have to get to the root of the causes. Often the solutions are more labor and time intensive than we had anticipated.
Sometimes we lose our patience when a simple repair turns into an ordeal. Isn’t’ that when we most need patience? Theoretically, the same things that bring us peace inside normally should also bring us peace inside under pressure or when things don’t go as planned. At times when it doesn’t work for me, I know something is out of balance and I need to see where my spirit is at.
Some things are not working in our country and around the world. These are times when we need to find the source and apply the best solutions. If we don’t understand the problem, that’s where we should start. Especially when our simple repairs turn into complex ordeals.
Posted by carl1236 at September 27, 2004 10:00 PM | Attitude