THE STANDARD
The Standard: Be everything you’re supposed to be — 2023
You don’t have to be an ardent Bible believer to find some meaning in the stories. Where do you find your standard? Who or what is your measurement of quality and attainment? What’s the source of your striving, and where does it plateau? The book of Genesis goes through a discourse on The God of the heavens and the earth deep in His unlimited bag of creativity. He separates the light from darkness — that’s good: in the following days He names the land, the seas, brings forth fruit, grass and seeds, creates the sun and the moon — night and day; the days following, He creates animals and then finally, humans — a vision that builds worlds and the craftsmanship to bring the vision to life. After all of His creating, He sits back, relaxes and sees that everything He brought into the light, was “good”. Validity of the story is not the point. What’s the takeaway here? What’s yours? First — The Standard Must Be Unseen, Invisible, Eternal. Second — The Entirety of Our Experienced Existence In This Life Is Relational. No Thing or No One Stands Alone.
We have seen a stark shift from what set the standards for relationships. From culture and nationality, to government and pop culture? Growing up the standard was ‘bare minimum’ when it came to relationships. Bare minimum would be classified as a surface level friendship. The basis of the relationship is rooted in a few shared similarities. “We went to elementary school together.” “We both worked at TSA”. “You like Kobe Bryant? I do too!”. The root of the relationship is not found in who are, just a shared experience. The “friends” that I had, talked about me for pursuing what I loved doing. “John has a podcast (insert giggles)”, the envy could be heard through the jokes. The craziest part was in 2016 in our area, I was the only person who had a podcast! The way that I grew up, the standard for friendship was to talk about eachother. We weren’t aware that it was just our way of coping with our pain. It wasn’t until my wife, (then girlfriend) said to me, “these guys aren’t your friends, they hate you.” Think about that for a moment, some of you have a standard of having friends that literally hate you. Friends for convenience.
At the end of 2021, two of my closest friends passed away unexpectedly. I had been living in a cycle of ignoring the qualities that mattered, truth spoken in love, curiosity, encouragement, accountability, growth. Don’t include time, time’s not a factor. Appearances can wear masks for as long as they see a benefit. Generally for men, crisis must occur for a change to take place. My friends’ passings made me more aware of the unseen qualities of life that give evidence of the eternal. Boldly pursuing what you love forces you to be aware of “friends” that are uncomfortable in your pursuit. Small fish love staying in small ponds. When the goal is to get to a destination: an ideal position, title or dollar amount, you are indeed a little fish. Small fish, love small ponds; stakes stay low so convenience can stay high. Low stakes equates to low standards; but when you pursue purpose and don’t conform they cast you out, like a leper. We need not wait until we lose our relationship with something or someone to understand how deeply we appreciated it. Whether we choose to ignore it or not the truth is that death lurks. It’s a wake up call for some, for others it numbs them, for those chosen it’s the end. Take another moment to think; some peoples purpose is to come into this world and clock out before they reach the age of 30. When the inevitable arrives, what shortcut is there to remedy it? [Amazon Prime Ads enters chat]. The quality of your relationships is reflective of how you value life. Are you valuing yours?
“What is this, and how does it work?”. A question that I live by. The “how,” is the technique of doing a task skillfully and efficiently. “What” is your relationship (attitude) towards it. The foundation of a quality relationship is understanding. When I was first building skills, I sucked; at everything. Skill-building and myself had no relationship because up to that point in my life, I built no skills! Luckily relationships have the possibility of being dynamic. My desire to build skills and learn was greater than how I felt about being terrible. So, the desire to learn was watered in each skill that I learned. There were phases of being unbearable to myself, then signs of slight growth. The first part of the process, embarrassment came repeatedly. Being crossed in basketball, my whole body was thrown forward to the ground. While growing in music, the click track was lost while drumming (multiple times and an unpardonable sin). A promotion that I received to human resources was halted when I was fired. Podcasts episodes had to be deleted because I made errors with the guests, footage was erased that I just captured while doing videography, failed to explain my creative vision on my first creative director gig. There’s more but you get the point
My wife and I recently met up with an old mentor, now friend. The man operates like a machine. I asked him when does he remember becoming so process based. “People always pay attention to the people who win, I deconstructed why people lose.” Becoming hyperaware of why you lose increases your attention to detail. The second part of the process was building discipline through repetition. For basketball I’d train 3 times a day; 6-8 hours daily to improve on drums; there were an abundance of 24 hour editing nights to complete a turnaround; read a plethora of books to improve in building relationships for podcasting; months of research for starting a business. When MRI scans from a fall I had determined that I sustained a torn meniscus, partially torn ACL a tear in my PCL and swelling; every single day I spent 2-3 hours a day rebuilding my entire body, from the ground up. Most importantly, when my wife and I got married in 2023, I felt pulled to draw close to my God YAHUAH. Seeking to understand His will for my life through prayer, fasting and reading His word, He revealed His nature to me. His nature is His character. Going back to Genesis, the Bible states that we are made in the image of God (YAHUAH). That image that we are made in, to represent, is His character. What is to be understood though is that the YAH puts an ideal in all of us who are receptive. many of us ignore it, it makes a fear what we will need to become. This expression of His character through me was found in this second part of the process. Learning to better understand my flaws made me seek a higher standard. Through striving for the unseen, you meet people who might be a little further than you to help guide you on the way (shout out to Mark & Joe). Improvement is found in building your relationship with the process. Learning to love the fact that in everything, you can go from being a novice to intermediate to an expert; reveals the depth of gifts that have been instilled in you.
Any man who sets another man as his standard has low standards.
Joseph Bologne Chevalier de Saint-Georges was an elite swordsman, genius violinist, a celebrated soldier in the French Revolution and the first known classical composer of African descent. Being born in the 1700’s it’s said that he overcame the social stigma’s of his era. Joseph raised the standard for men, for Thomas Alexandre Dumas, he simply set a standard to build on. Dumas trained under Saint-Georges. Saint-Georges acted as a bar for Dumas who went on to become the first General of African descent in the French army. Dumas built on what he learned from Saint-Georges. It’s always funny to me when I hear people aspire to be rappers, melodic poets. Yes, it is a skill, but the stake is low. Is like you settle to be used by a variety of platforms while you’re hot then they dump you. Reminds me of, never mind. Why settle to be used by a platform, when you can be it? I digress. The men of the 1700s faced laws seeking to limit their upward mobility on the basis of skin color, represented more than themselves, and they sought solace in the face of death. They literally fought in wars. That’s high stakes. There were men pre 21st century that solely pursued their purposes. These men would spend their entire lives striving uphill to defy conformity’s standards. Paul Robeson, Richard Wright, Benjamin Banneker lived primarily in obscurity but left a lasting impact. They molded who they were internally, it was expressed through their skills that they used to defy all the odds of their time. Inconvenience propelled these men to greatness; obstacles tend to be building blocks.
Any man who sets another man as his standard has low standards.
This standard is the process of aligning the character of your actions to the attributes of the unseen. Not to be seen by others, but to be a presence, a pattern that is felt and an impact that lingers for generations. Everything around you is pulling you to pay attention and react to a world outside of you. Escapism is the anesthesia to life’s challenges. Movements crying for equity paint a false reality that life should be or was ever fair, when it’s the differences that make us special. People are outsourcing their purpose to virtual reality, drones are delivering mail, robots are dropping off food. As society seeks to remove the inconvenience of struggle from our human experience, what it means to be human is changing. We must seek struggle to become who we are meant to be. You are the standard. The vision of you that was implanted in your mind by the unseen, by GOD; only you have the capabilities required to become who you are meant to be. The more you develop a genuine relationship with yourself, the more the ideal version of yourself reveals itself. This is my focus, to see how deep I can go. I know you’re insecure, I am too. To be an active participant in life is to be guided internally, accepting those insecurities, and pushing through them. Life is precious, and there’s too much at stake. It’s playing Grand Theft Auto, Skyrim, Red Dead Redemption. Are you the controlled or the controller? Enough babbling, here’s some data -
“In a paper by Cornell psychologists called “The Ideal Road Not Taken,” researchers surveyed hundreds of participants in six studies. The psychologists identified three elements that make up a person’s sense of self — actual self, ideal self and ought self.
Actual Self: Qualities you believe you have.
Ideal Self: Qualities you want to have.
Ought Self: The person you think you should have been based on your obligations and responsibilities.
When asked to name their single biggest regret, 76 percent of participants said they didn’t fulfill their ideal self. People are likely to let their dreams and aspirations slip by unrealized. They focus on what they should do, instead of what they want.
“When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled.” – Bonnie Ware” — (Shufeldt, 2022)
The world is available to you, The Standard is infinite, JUST BE. GOOD is the minimum.
