Ready or not, here I come(?), Part 1 of 4

A personal reflection on Matthew 25.1-13

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I like to be ready. Back in the day of my school days, all my homework done. To this day, all my organizational legwork done. My knowledge base intact. My inherent talents honed and at my command. My necessary tools at hand. Physically rested. Emotionally stable. Mentally alert. (Financially secure doesn’t hurt!) Ready to encounter come what may, come whene’er, come howe’er, even, to paraphrase the prayer, “the (sometimes foreseen) changes and (the often unforeseen) chances of this life.”

Being ready is an aspect of another universal goal of human living. Getting it, life right.

And it doesn’t matter whether my readiness is real as in my being self-assured that the requisite resources are within my reach or that it is more a matter of how I feel. Or both. The effect on my attitude is roughly the same. I am confident at heart with a vision of accomplishment in mind. Ready to prove my mettle, my merit.

Nevertheless, however ready I may want (even need) to be, on occasion, I am nagged by memories of times when I wasn’t ready. Such remembrances stir my anxieties about the possibilities that, at some future moment, I won’t be ready. Here, too, it doesn’t matter whether my unreadiness is real as in my wrenching awareness that I didn’t or may not have the requisite resources within my reach or that it is more a matter of how I feel. Or both. My attitude is the same. Little confidence at heart. Little clarity of visions of accomplishment. My self-image of competence torn. My tower of self-esteem built on the foundation of past achievements toppled.

As bad enough as this is, would that I didn’t have to feel the need to prove myself again and again. But I do. For life continues to present opportunities on which my sense of readiness rests and on which my sense of having gotten it (whatever the “it” is; life or some aspect of it) right rises and falls.