Job interviews are ideal metaphors for a principle of life transparent to every one of us, but one we most usually instinctively flinch from. When I attended an interview with my daughter recently, we both found the amount of new information a challenge to assimilate. And at most interviews there are tough, searching questions asked. This was no exception.
Life’s like that. There are times when there’s a lot on and our operational, conscious minds are demanded full attention. There are differences in how people approach this, however.
Some shrink from the required mental battle—for attention, distraction or fear. They get bewildered and confused like deer trapped in headlights. Others get visibly angry. For these, loading up means that mood of resentment rears its ugly head for the demands placed. Life is apparently unfair for requiring so much!
Yet, there’s another person—and we’ve all seen him or her—who takes the yelping mental challenge in their stride, and they therefore save any emotional or spiritual chagrin which necessarily troubles the former two.
They keep things simple. They negate any negative cognitive traffic almost at source. They’re mentally self-disciplined. They simply bear up with an honestly nervous smile; neither fighting others nor themselves; not aggressing nor submitting. Theirs is the pleasant way.
Sometimes a whole wad of stuff is thrown at us, and it comes certainly when we least expect it. It’s a powerful thing, however, to allow the ‘load up’ in faith that it will eventually relent and we’ll be left with a complement of useable information to take us onward and upward. At this place, we’ve comprehended life and proven effective in the person of our bodies.
At our absolute maximal cognitive reach, we inspire ourselves and others in the tradition of Rudyard Kipling’s, If:
“If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’”
If we can do these things, bearing up under the most intense pressure, we will transcend ourselves, and we will also—in that moment—find the way of conquering self-doubt and fear, and of control over the human spirit. Confidence for the future is hence nurtured.
Loading up with good, efficient effect says a lot about the maturity of you as a person. Not only are you capable, sprightly and determined to hold fast to the hope you and others have in you, you present faithfully on the continuum of courage and might, a person of love and moral virtue at the highest percentile.
© 2010 S. J. Wickham.
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