Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Paging Nige ...

Shouldn't they be sentenced to hard labor instead? Family who are 'too fat to work' say £22,000 worth of benefits is not enough.

Eight hours of swinging a sledgehammer would surely help with the weight problem.

Speaking of Nige, he has a most interesting post: Is It a Syndrome?
I tend to think Nige is right and this is not a syndrome but a human characteristic. I took the Impostor Syndrome Quiz, however, and couldn't honestly answer any of the questions in the affirmative. I think there are two reasons for this. One is I always take the time to prepare for anything I am called upon to do. Then I go ahead and let what happens, happen. Things don't always go as well as you had hoped, but if one has done the prep work, you can live with the disappointment. The second reason has to do with something I learned from a sermon given many years ago by Bishop Fulton Sheen. It was about humility.
A practiced homilist, Sheen knew how to order his thoughts for a talk and go out and give it. It usually took him about four minutes to do this. In the particular talk I am thinking about he brought this up and said, "Suppose someone came up to me after a talk and said, 'That was a really fine sermon,' and I replied, 'Oh, it was nothing; I only spent four minutes preparing it.'" This would not be an example of modesty, Sheen said. It would be an example of someone fishing around for even more praise. His point? Genuine modesty has nothing to do with talking down your genuine accomplishments. What you say in such an instance is simply, "Thank you; I'm so glad you liked it."
This has stayed with me from childhood and served me well. There are some things I can do reasonably well and lots of others I have no particular knack for. The self-esteem business eludes me. It sounds unseemly. As for self-doubt, my religious preceptors taught me not only how to examine my conscience, but also to do it every day. So I am very much aware that I am a sinner in need of God's mercy. That puts a lot of things in perspective.

2 comments:

  1. So, someone in the family says:"What we get barely covers the bills and puts food on the table. It's not our fault we can't work. We deserve more." Well, to use the hackneyed phrase, a picture is indeed worth a thousand words. Combine the family's complaints and the photograph of the porcine group, and most people would share your prescription of sledge-hammers and 8-hour days. Moreover, most people would have to face the clear conclusion: No, these obese grifters do not deserve more. They deserve next to nothing. They are proof that welfare, in too many cases, hurts people. That may sound cold and insensitive, but so be it.

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  2. Amen, brother! I somehow think these people are not attracting gobs of sympathy.

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