Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Synergy

I don't know where the term began, but I do know that it now refers to two or more separate entities working together in unison and harmony for one single purpose or cause. Synergy creates and accomplishes what one entity by itself couldn't possibly do. It is the the power of teamwork.

Sometimes I wish that my mind, heart, and soul could somehow "synergize" perfectly. Imagine how great it would be to be thinking and focusing on something, to be passionate about it, and to know deep down that it is the right thing. Ever been so focused on one particular thing that every part of you just completely unleashes itself into its completion or undertaking?

No... I haven't either. Not yet anyways. There's always some part of me that disagrees or has second thought. If it's something good, it's the sin nature of my heart pulling me away. If it's something bad, it's my soul or mind telling me somewhere in the back that what I'm doing is wrong. But there's always that tension. The three parts of me never work in unison towards one direction, there's always some angle between them.

It reminds me of the four way tug of war we had at orientation. Each focus group (split by majors) was to take one of the sides of the rope which together formed a plus sign. In this version, there is only one winner, and that is whoever can pull the rope farthest back up their direction. My focus group (the engineer group) ended up winning, so that was a lot of fun.

The problem we encountered was when only three teams fit into a particular round. Instead of changing the angles to 120 degree spreads, the angles remained the same at 90. Of course this gave one team a completely unfair advantage being that they had nothing tugging against them. Everytime it occurred, the one team in the center would always pull the other two along with ease.

It seems like in the worst of situations my heart and my soul are going at it like that, straight across from each other evenly matched. When faced with a problem, I remain at a standstill until my mind steps in from an unfair point. It doesn't have trouble deciding what to do based on the circumstance because it meets no resistance from anything. The problem is that I end up going wherever my mind decides is right and best to go, and my mind is no more perfect then my heart or soul. Let's just say a majority of the time I make a hugely wrong decision.

I sometimes wonder if it's possible to be truly "synergetic". I think the goal is to aim to be truly focusing everything on God and furthering His kingdom. We all fall short, me especially, as parts of me start pulling in different directions. My only hope is that God will work through me to decrease the angles between my heart, soul, and mind that are pulling me in different directions and slowing me down.

2 comments:

AKBogert said...

Dude, this was really a cool analogy. Like, really cool. I know, i'm the english major and all but i can't find better words right now (it may be because of sleep deprivation but whatever). Anyhow, i need to talk with you about something Audrey proposed, a sort of mailing list for our readers to get a heads-up whenever we write new blogs. Hit my e-mail :)

audrey said...

ok so i just posted a new blog and was going to shoot on over here to tell you that you need to write a new blog yourself. then i saw this and realized that there's a group of us kind of riding the same wavelength in life this year, and that my blog kind of lines up with this one in a weird way.

human nature sucks, and life is stinking hard sometimes. hope and forgiveness are there, but finding these things aren't always easy. this is why we need each other, hence the subject of my blog.

anyway, in the words of a wise man, your analogy was, like, really cool.