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The Day 40 chapter of The Purpose Driven Life recommends you take some time to prepare a Life Purpose Statement, in which you write your own commitment to the five purposes. I feel I have a bit more work to do before I can truly commit to each purpose but I will say I found the book a worthwhile read. It has highlighted to me the absence of opportunities to learn a good moral code in general life and now, when I watch TV (which is where I think a lot of people learn their "morals" from), I can't help but notice how it promotes negative behaviours by always showing a positive outcome when people do the wrong thing.
It reminds me of something a friend of mine told me years ago. He was friends with a journalist who wrote a column in The Age newspaper's Good Weekend magazine. The column presented three people's experiences in relation to a different topic each week. The journalist was trying to find three people to present different viewpoints on infidelity. He had found someone who had been unfaithful and their relationship had ended. He had found someone who's partner had been unfaithful and their relationship had ended. For the third person, he was looking for someone who had been unfaithful, but who's relationship had survived. He couldn't find anyone. Yet many TV shows had relationships surviving infidelity like its just another issue that people have to deal with in life (I'm thinking of Californication and The Sopranos as examples).
But I digress, as I said in yesterday's post, I'm feeling quite overwhelmed by all the requirements of this book. However, at the end of "40" days (or 61 actual calendar days) I am more interested in learning about the bible and have downloaded the one year bible reading plan from The Purpose Drive Life website. I have also ran out of excuses and will be starting back at church this Sunday 2 May 2010. (Now that I've written that, I have to do it).
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For those of you who have read through all my posts, you may recall that I undertook a "wellness" test back on Day 8, as a benchmark to see whether following the five purposes would improve my life. Back then, I got a score of 772 and having just redone the test, I got the exact same score of 772. I'm not sure that it proves anything except that I should start exercising.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
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Well its been a good read anyway and sorry I distracted you from Church this weekend.
ReplyDeleteGlad you enjoyed the blog. There's always next week to get to church.
ReplyDeleteBy exercising, do you mean at the gym???
ReplyDeleteI hate gyms, but yes, something along those lines.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I hate gyms as well and refuse to use them.
ReplyDeleteHey Isabella,
ReplyDeleteI'm not a Christian and was apprehensive of commenting when I visited you before because of that. Then I realised that actually not being Christian doesn't prevent me from relating to you and what you're writing here and so I wanted to comment on this post because I so agree with it particularly in your ref to television.
First, I HATE television and haven't had one since I left my parent's home at 21. Sometimes I read or hear about programs that sound interesting and I will find them on my computer and watch them. For example, I'd heard so much about the Biggest Loser that I found one of the series on the computer and watched it. I've never seen or heard of Californication (the name says it all though) and I've never seen the Sopranos though I've heard about it ad infinitum.
The thing is that I really think television is a wonderful invention that has been put to mostly (though not completely) negative use to get us to buy things we don't need, to lull us into a stupor, to glamourise corrupt values (as you said), to reinforce harmful stereotypes, to brainwash us in various ways, etc.
I'm very interested in this journey you're on and will go back to the beginning of your blog and catch up over time.
Gyms are so anti-social. Everyone just does their workout like there is no-one else in the room.
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