I used to want to be famous. You might still want to be. (Ok, truth is I still want to be famous enough for 5 people to read this…actually 50). This desire to be something more came from the discomfort of just being me. I was uncomfortable with myself, and equally uncomfortable not being the person the next rung up. Life is filled with frustration as you measure who you are by what you’re not.

Celebrity is part of our culture – it makes us feel the consistent nagging to be more than we currently are – if our life will count for anything. Even that equation is a bit insane, because you hit the next rung, then there’s another, and another…

I find this in almost every area of life. There are better dads than me, better husbands, better friends. There are people who are smarter, wiser, more intelligent and more spiritual. There are better leaders, speakers, writers. There’s always someone better, and one of the most discouraging things is measuring oneself against others. As someone once said, “Comparison is poison.”

I’m daily tempted to drink the poison.

So then what? How do I measure my life? How do I think of myself in light of all the people who are better than me? Two thoughts:

A. Better than me…but not me. I’m responsible for my life – my wife, my kids, my church family, my friends, etc. They only have one me – and I play a specific role in their lives (and they in mine). I think one of the downsides to viral community and greater awareness in the global community is we think we’re all the same and we lose a sense of the different textures of our various contexts, places, and communities. I’m not encouraging a sense of individualism here – but I am advocating for value as God-created/breathed human beings. I’m arguing our context has value and meaning. God’s given me the gifts of persons and places – my context. So how will I steward these things as a unique human being created, formed, and shaped by God and planted in this place at this time?

B. I need to scrap this whole idea of success altogether. Success takes away our sense of being. It calls us to the next place without allowing us to be present in the place we currently are. With success the present becomes a stepping stone to the future (you get the picture of walking all over your present place to get to someplace supposedly better? Here’s an image!).

What if we aren’t supposed to initiate the move to the next thing, the next place? What if we were to respond to it? What if the present is God’s way of forming in us what needs to be formed? What if (and I think this is the case) He knows this, but we will never see it but in hindsight? Follow when he calls, wait till he does. Wait with God. Because what’s present is important.