t 'n t luoma

It's a reminder.

First, a little background on the slogan. It was on a sign over the Xerox machine at the church where I did my internship. I thought it was one of the better pseudo-Beatitudes that I had heard.

It has been my motto just about ever since. Why? Because we (citizens of the USA, but it is no doubt true in other places in the world as well) are so concerned with control, schedules, and information. Gotta plan, gotta know, gotta go, gotta have a minute-by-minute itinerary.

Now don't get me wrong, I think there are some times when you shouldn't be really laid back about things. Surgery comes to mind. Air traffic controlling. I'm sure there are others.

But for the most of us, we need to chill out and relax a whole great big bunch, and step out of the second-by-second intensive way of life.

Change is inevitable.
Frustration is inevitable.
How you respond is up to you.

If you're wound tighter than the wristwatch of an obsessive compulsive, life will be miserable.

If you can remain flexible, deal with what comes along, and try to make the best of it, then life will be more enjoyable.

Nothing external will have changed, but everything be different.

So anyway, fast forward several years. I took a group of teenagers to the mountains for a few days, and no watches need apply. We came up with a Top Ten list of quotes from the weekend, and one of them was BATFFTSNBBOOS which I quoted as being from the fictional Biblical book "3 Timothy 3:28" (3/28 is my birthday ;-)

A few months later the Director of Christian Education uses it on a sign announcing some changes to Sunday School classroom assignments.

Then I was working with a local funeral home about a service, and the woman called to tell me that the family would like to make some last minute changes, and would that be OK with me. I said sure, and then I apparently quoted my aforementioned favorite aphorism.

Next thing I knew, I was driving past this place in town that puts up humorous little sayings on their sign, and I saw my little slogan up their. (Turns out the woman from the funeral home talked to someone at the company with the sign).

Well I got a chuckle out of the whole thing, so I dropped by with my camera. Then I was thinking about beta testing.

If you want to beta test any piece of software, you need to be willing to be flexible. It may crash. You might even lose something that you were working on.

You can rip out your hair and wail and gnash your teeth.
You can post long, rambling tirades to newsgroups, your web page, and via email.

Or you can say, "It happens" and move on.

Nothing will have changed,
but everything will have changed.