Oh the little things

It doesn't take the force of an avalanche to start an avalanche. It takes only for one factor to shift from normality; whether it be additional precipitation or a small rock fall, it doesn't take a huge amount of change to start what ends up being an unstoppable and destructive force.

Jesse stop trying to be a wise sage dude and get to the point.

Well, like I do a lot of the time, I was dwelling in my thoughts recently. While I think I'm a great guy and all (and lets all admit, I am a great guy), I have a great many flaws. Not just little flaws that can be characterised as quirks or whatever. I mean certain ways of thinking that I have adapted that aren't healthy. Thinking about all the bad habits or characteristics in my personality, I began to wonder where they came from. I couldn't pinpoint any specific dates in my life in which I started to act in any particular fashion, but I did deduce that they must have started with little things.

People say that after a little lie, it gets easier and easier to tell a big lie. Then next thing you know, you're lying by default. You're lying all the time because it's easier, and it's how your mind works now. You find yourself pulling yourself out of the ordinary just to tell the truth.

That's life. The littlest things that we don't even pay mind to are the things that we should be the most diligent about. That's not to say that we should ignore big issues that are in your face or anything. Sure, pay attention to them, deal with them, and make sure they don't overwhelm you.

But at the same time, watch yourself. Like, really watch yourself. I'm talking from personal experience. It's the little things. Sleeping in half an hour later than I should turned into not caring about missing first period at high school. Which turned into not caring if I turned up during interval. Which became me not minding if I missed the first week of uni lectures. Which made me question if I really should go into my physics lectures everyday, seeing as I already knew most of it already. Umm yeah; I failed that paper.

I know right. But that's just an example of something that really wasn't a huge problem turning into me having to work harder the next semester to make up for a failed STAGE ONE paper. Wow, as I'm writing this, I don't know whether or not I'm gonna post it, because it's embarrasing. But you're reading this sentence right now aren't you, so I guess I did.

It doesn't have to be about school. All around us, all the time, there are opportunities to just drop your guard and compromise. Even just a little. Letting out that four-lettered word in a soft mumble. Kissing that bodypart of your parnter that you shouldn't, even just for a moment. Having just that one bottle too many. Please reader, be careful. You know your boundaries in your heart. Don't change them just because it's slowly getting more and more difficult not to cross them. Be faithful in the small, be diligent in the seemingly pointless.

And yes, before you get on my case about being a hypocrite, this isn't how I live all the time. But it's how we all know in our hearts we should live. I'm speaking the truth, not the convenient.

However, there is good news. Just as bad things can start small, so do good things. People in succesful jobs, or who have great kids, or just seem like really great people with great influence are all enviable. But they did the little and mostly unseen things to get where they are. That's right I bolded the word unseen. That wasn't an accident. Starting good habits is about as difficult as starting bad habits is easy. (...does that make sense?) You know what I mean. But in the long run, it'll be way better.

So just as I implore to you that we should be diligent in stopping the big issues before they get big, we should equally live out the truth in whatever little form we can. Then it will grow. It's just like a great and mighty tree (this would sound so much cooler if I knew the name of a massive tree) that starts out as a seed. Things that hinder us start as little compromises that we think are unimportant. But things that change our lives in amazing ways also start out as little things that also seem unimportant. But be diligent. It all adds up, it all grows, and it's all noticed in the end. Trust me.

Any awesome quotes to end this? Come on, you know heaps of random quotes.

How about this:

1 Corinthians 15:58 - Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.