Skip to main content

Be a reverse “whisper”.

One of the most interesting facts I learnt while visiting Rome last weekend was during our tour of the Colosseum and Forum Romanum. The Roman emperors would travel around doing their thing, making it very clear to the people that they were in charge and making sure they were submissive- both through putting on days of “games” in the Colosseum with free food so they wouldn’t think to rebel, as well as putting up ridiculously high statues of themselves. Needless to say these Emperors were quite proud and confident and probably quite full of themselves. So, when they would travel around they would have a “whisper” accompany them. A person whose role was to remind them that they were not gods and not immortal. Someone to keep them “grounded” so to speak. (Naturally these whispers life expectancy probably wasn’t very long).

I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot, realising that today what most people need isn’t a “whisper” to keep them grounded but a “reverse-whisper” to lift them up. Most people think less of themselves and tend to put themselves down and negatively compare themselves to others, rather than see all they have in them and their value and talents. And so I think we all need “reverse whispers” to remind us of who we are and what we can do. Not so we become puffed up and proud, but so that we become who we were created to be and able to help others become all they were created to be and do.

And we can all be “reverse whispers” to those around us. Instead of just thinking the good things we see in someone, saying it... “whispering” it. And using our words to bring life to those around us.

Popular posts from this blog

Packing...again.

I just folded the last load of laundry and I’m almost packed. Off to the airport at 5am tomorrow morning, heading off to Amsterdam. I’m excited, a bit nervous, and wondering what it’ll be like. It’s been a good week at home with lots of quality time with family, especially the little nieces and nephew. I’m glad I’ll see them in April again. Well, not much to write and packing to be done and a bit of sleep would probably be a good idea too. Next time I write it’ll be from Amsterdam....

Single-tasking September: The art of single-tasking.

To change habits and ways of life, the motivation for change has to be strong, and the benefits outweigh the effort it takes to make the change.  For so long it’s seemed like the ability to multitask has been regarded as a great skill, but is it really a good thing? Recovering from burn-out, one of the effects I noticed was that it was harder to concentrate, and especially tricky trying to focus on many things at once. I’d try to multitask, only to realise that all tasks suffered from lack of capacity to complete any one of them. The challenge is that the habit of always doing many things at once goes deep, and when I tried to focus on just one thing, I found that it was actually really difficult.  As I did a little google search on the matter, I found it seems like multitasking isn’t as healthy as once thought, and that it doesn’t help productivity. Some even referred to it as “switch tasking”, in the sense that the brain isn’t doing many things at once, but shifting rapidly...

Reality starting to hit...

Today has been quite a sad day as it is slowly dawning on my that I'm not going to be here for much longer. It's now less than a month till I leave, and I feel sad. Sad to leave what has been a life for me. Sad to leave so many wonderful people. Sad to not be able to continue to fight for and invest in all the streetkids, families, prisonkids, and other random people I've been fighting for all these years. I doesn't feel like I'm giving up, but it does feel like I'm going to be left with a kind of void where all these people were in my life. I guess not knowing the BIG "what next..." doesn't help, but I do have peace. Peace that the God who called me here, and has kept me here, is still the same. Peace that He will guide me and walk with me. Even so...today I felt sad.