Standards
How much time do we need to spend to know that a person is worth loving?
I have been wondering about this these past days. Actually, I have been wondering about a LOT of things. They are pretty overwhelming and i don’t know if I even want to say what these are exactly.
People set standards for everything. That is to make things more effective and efficient. Imagine having different voltage levels for residential electricity users. If your neighbor borrows your microwave oven and it is rated 110 V, and your neighbor uses 240V, goodluck. Or rather, goodbye microwave. So we have set the residential voltage level to be 110 in the states, and in the Philippines, it’s 220V. That’s why when I was young, I broke some appliances because some were gifts from relatives who came home from the states, and I plugged them directly instead of using a transformer first.
And so, people set standards and people expect you to follow. The standards have expanded to cover even the way we live – what house to buy, what job to take, even our kids’ education, what kind of birthday party to give to our five year old… Then there’s set rules on what kind of man or woman you should choose, otherwise, people would raise their eyebrows and who knows what else they would raise, and it’s like you’re expected to explain or apologize. Imagine, apologizing to your parents for falling in love with a maid, or a security guard. Fall in love with a business tycoon? no problem. Fall in love with a janitor? Goodluck.
So, we have set standards. I myself am guilty of it. What can i do, I grew up with virtual walls in my mind. Anyone more than two years older or younger, is out of the list. Like, if I’m a circuit, I have a +/- 2V tolerance level. Anything beyond that will break the circuit. Anything beyond what I have set for myself will not ‘break’ my life, but it will ‘break’ the ‘image’ I have set for myself. And since I came from the best university in the country, I have unintentionally set another standard – if a man can’t handle the fact that I’m better than him in any aspect, get lost.
Living within the standards is safe. But as they say, anything that will make you feel alive, is outside what is safe. Living within the standard is called existence. Living outside your comfort zone is called life.
Of course I know that. But it’s not what we know, right? It’s what we do.
So I think about all these and I suddenly realize – God doesn’t set standards for loving us. I’m not saying that since He loves us so much, we can all do whatever we want and ignore His teachings. Rather, He loves us regardless, with the intention of helping us have a change of heart and return to Him.
God’s love is just plain crazy. Meaning, we can’t comprehend it at all, so I say it’s crazy. and in life, when we have set all these standards for whatever, God interferes and breaks down all the walls we have set up for ourselves. It is ironic that when I tell myself, “I would never…”, something happens and I end up doing whatever it is I try to avoid. And after that, I realize – it’s not that bad.
So how long do we need to realize that love has come in our midst, and that it is real? The standards say a lot. My standards say maybe a year. Ok, a few months? Heck, a few weeks?
And that is just the “time aspect”. Don’t even ask me about everything else. Suffice it to say, God’s signs of love have shattered every standard I have set. Every single one. Except for the core of the matter – the most important aspects.
Anyway, my colleague have mentioned before, at how we lower our standards to the brink of desperation because we simply do not want to live life alone. It’s scary to think that I would come to that point. I hope I never have to. I hope that my Joseph comes before that happens.