I have heard and read a lot about being intentional. Doing things on purpose is something that appeals to our desire to control and accomplish. Sometimes I think we get deliberate about things that have little impact, little affect for us or those around us. Maybe being deliberate is much more, much harder, much deeper than we want to go after. We have a family with children born in three hemispheres and three continents because we were intentional. I have a great relationship with my wife because I am intentional about investing in that bond. Something I am less on purposed about is my temper, my ability to go from calm and happy to raging lunatic. I read a friend’s post on Facebook the other day about not doing what is expected but what is right or needed or necessary. We live in a world where doing what is expected is expected and we shun nonconformity or we celebrate it because we wish we could be someone else at least with our actions. So back to my temper.
We all possess the capacity to become raging lunatics, we all get angry, we all lose our cool, we all get to the point we crack. I truly believe this is part of our condition and we can never be rid of this trend. With that said, what are we to do as we operate in a world where there are always others doing things, saying things, showing things that get us inflamed. Facebook is a monument to our need to vent, to demean, to bemoan, to snark, to punish. The wall of social media has enabled us to be insulated from the real time impact of our loss of cool. I am not here to bash the world of social media, it has had an amazing impact on all our lives and enabled us to do things others had only dreamed about. But I feel we have lost something, lost a proximity that in the past conditioned us to be a little more controlled, a little more kind, a little more civil. So if we all are susceptible to un-cooling, to becoming a red faced screaming ninny what do we do.
How do we become on purposed about managing a part of our being that can destroy so much with so little effort. I think it comes down to our fuse. When you light a firecracker you have a certain amount of time until it explodes. No matter how long the fuse is it will eventually explode. So when the boom comes we duck or we embrace the rage and light more fuses. What if we started building longer fuses on purpose. What if we took deliberate action to lengthen, to expand, to control the time it takes each of us to reach our point of conflagration. To be sure you, me and everyone else will loss their ability to act with dignity and respect. In our times of rage we spew words and thoughts that cut deep and at times leave scars. Maybe through our intentional effort to have a longer fuse we will have fewer fits of rage, fewer bouts of pain giving, fewer times of needing to be right, fewer having to say I’m sorrys. Imagine a community where we deliberately help each other grow a longer fuse, a slower burn. This on purposed elongating would create a calmer, happier, more respect filled world. Maybe in our intentional fuse expansion we will lessen the list of things that light it in the first place. Maybe we will be more purposeful about other things, other relationships, other actions, other words. Maybe being on purpose about a small thing will grow into a movement of on purposed lives. Imagine the marriages, the friendships, the families, the communities, the countries, the worlds we could build all because we lengthened a fuse.