Bobbing and Weaving – The Dance of Justification

We’re not all too bad at bobbing and weaving.  We’re pretty good at side-stepping and side-lining issues.  We’re quite adept at cutting and spinning, doing a bit of fanciful dodging, as well as deftly running the obstacle course without getting so much as a scratch on us.  We’ve learned to see things coming from a long ways away, and we’ve figured out how to duck and cover with rather amazing agility so that all that stuff rolls right by us without so much as a scratch.  We get the game, we get the need to master the game, we get the need to succeed at the game, we get gamey at playing the game, and we bob and weave in order to win the game.

Bobbing and Weaving – The Curse of Accountability

What we typically don’t do is to evaluate our culpability.  Our mindset isn’t naturally one of accountability where we step up, take what’s ours and own it.  We aren’t necessarily blessed with a pressing sense of responsibility, and we’re rather lax when it comes to developing an awareness that we’re answerable to the choices that we’ve made.  We aren’t particularly prone to own what’s ours; to settle up when we’ve screwed up, fess up when we’ve faltered, and mop up when we’ve messed up.  Rather, we bob and weave.

Bobbing and Weaving – Ethics, Value and Morals

Sometimes bobbing and weaving is nothing more than a character issue.  It may rest in selfishness, self-centeredness, varying degrees of rancid narcissism, and a tainting dash of ego here and there.  It’s the attitude of self that’s interminable driven by such pathetic questions as “what’s in my best interest, what course of action is going to get me the most of whatever it is that I want, what’s going to put me in the best light or advance my agenda the furthest?”  It’s about the tedious strategy and the uncompromising prioritization of the brass ring that unflinchingly dictates any and all decisions.  So, if bobbing and weaving most effectively gets me to my goal, let’s have at it.

Bobbing and Weaving – Bad Habits

In some instances, bobbing and weaving is simply the stuff of habit.  Habit is simply a behavior that’s become so natural that we do it without even thinking about it.  The hidden danger in a habit is that, in time, the habit is presumed as normal and healthy.  The behavior becomes so habitual that we never take the time to question the habit.  We never think to pause long enough and think about what we’re doing and the exact nature of whatever it is that we’re doing.  Habit moves the action beyond evaluation.  We just go about the business of doing it.  And when this becomes the nature of our business, we better believe that our business will embrace a whole bunch of bobbing and weaving.

We are Not Designed for Bobbing and Weaving

You may want to take a personal inventory and ask what you’re doing.  You might have learned how to bob and weave with a superb degree of dexterity.  Indeed, many of us have become quite proficient at this sordid dance.  But in the bobbing and weaving, we will bob and weave past priceless opportunities for growth, precious possibilities of all kinds, and we will wholly forsake opportunities to stand up and force all lesser things to stand down.  We will become terribly compromised people living out a terribly compromised life of perpetual avoidance.

We are not designed to bob and weave.  Rather, we are undeniably designed for battle, and we are matchlessly equipped for victory in battle.  We are designed to grow in the face of adversity and not in the flight from it.  We are far more than bobbing and weaving would ever cause us to be.  We are built to seize and not side-step.  Ingrained in us is the ability to own what’s ours, to settle up when we’ve screwed up, to fess up when we’ve faltered, and to mop up when we’ve messed up.  In doing these things, bobbing and weaving will find no place in a life within which it should never find a place in the first place.

October 04, 2014