Sunday, March 12, 2017

I Could Care Less


I may be the most careless person I know. SO FAR, it has not caused me any catastrophic problems but there is always that risk. The following is about one of my many struggles relating to my keys. It is from November 8, 2006.

Today began with my normal routine. I got out of bed at 4:15 AM, ate my oatmeal with strawberry jelly, drank three cups of coffee, read from my One Year Bible, did twenty minutes on the Gazelle machine, and started to head out the door to lift weights at school. As I did, I encountered a problem- my keys were nowhere in sight. Since I was inside my apartment that had previously been locked, I knew the keys had been in my possession when I arrived home last evening. I tore the place up to no avail. As a last resort, I opened my front door, and there they were, hanging from the lock. My keys spent ten hours in plain sight. There is no telling who might have walked down the hall in the six hundred minutes they were exposed for the world to see. I breathed a prayer of thanksgiving and headed into the dark to battle the weights.

I constantly preach to my students the dangers of carelessness, prefacing my scolding with the reminder that I am more careless than anyone sitting in my classroom or playing on my basketball team. Last night/this morning, I dodged a bullet. Let's look at what COULD HAVE HAPPENED. Someone might have broken into my apartment. Someone might have stolen my car; it would be easy to match up the number on my door with the number on my assigned parking space. A glance inside my Toyota would have revealed my Westbury Christian School faculty parking permit, disclosing my place of employment. The keys to the main doors of WCS are on that key chain so by a short process of elimination, an intruder could have gained entrance into our school. My room key opens half the classrooms, giving access to a large number of computers as well as audio-visual equipment. My keys could also open our football and girls' basketball locker rooms, exposing thousands upon thousands of dollars of equipment and uniforms to theft. I could go on: possible harm to myself from an invader, the use of my car in the commission of crimes, vandalism inside our school. You get the picture. The smallest mistake could have had disastrous consequences. So many of the problems we face start just like; a small act of carelessness can lead to painful, and seemingly unrelated, conclusions. It might be something we blurt out without considering the impact of the words. Maybe it's a thought that lingers or a look of disinterest at a critical time. Little things we do can loop into increasingly large orbits circling the lives of our family and friends, teammates and classmates, co-workers and neighbors. Sometimes the stray bullet flies harmlessly out into space as it did for me the past twenty-four hours. Sometimes there is a cost for our careless deeds. I lived to mess up another day.



Applicable quote of the day:
"Nature abhors a vacuum and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness, I am sure to be filled."
Henry David Thoreau


God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1
http://www.hawleybooks.com/

E-mail me at steve@hawleybooks.com

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