I think I’m rather unremarkable, unspectacular. I have gifts, we all do, and I try to use them to the best of my ability, we don’t all do that but we probably should. That simple pair of facts though – acknowledgment of my gifts and the decision to use them – may have caused me some distress. There are people you see, who don’t see that as you making the best of the gifts you were granted by your Creator, but see it as you being in their face…..showing off and showing them up.
I am unremarkable and yet I remember a teacher in High School when I was no more than 12, humiliating me for some hairstyle. According to her, my hair was piled up on my head. “Like,” she said nastily, “some kind of crown”. One might be inclined to ask whether there was something intrinsically wrong about me dressing my hair in a regal manner. Clearly there was some issue there for her. That was a 50+ year old teacher to a 12 year old girl for no apparent, or good, reason. And that was well before I learned to sass people, so that wasn't the cause of her annoyance. If, as unremarkable as I am I got that, I can only imagine then what Michael Jackson’s life must have been like. The haters are everywhere.
I certainly don’t mean to put myself in the same category as MJ but I think there’s something to said for the idea that people try to hurt you just because you are 'doing you' to the best of your ability. Even if you’re not as gifted as Michael Joe Jackson.
Along with the gifts come failings (quelle surprise!). Each of us pays a price for those as well. I’m inclined today to wonder whether certain people pay a higher price for their failings because they have something that others don’t: gifts and the will to try to use them? Perhaps it’s just part of that all too human need to bring others down a peg, the need to diminish others so that we can feel bigger.
Without a doubt the gloved one was talented beyond anything most of us can likely claim. Here’s a guy with singing, composition, dancing and entertainment genes, every one of which he pushed to the limit. Add to that, he was clearly disciplined and hardworking. ‘Normal’ folk usually fall down on these two traits, but it is these that determine the heights to which we will ascend. He was obviously not afraid to ascend as so many of us are. He seemed driven to it, attracted to it like the proverbial moth to the flame. This is one of many lessons we can take from Michael’s tortured life: discipline has its benefits if only we would commit ourselves to it. His discipline made him remarkable….and I'm thinking, a target for the haters.
I am unremarkable and yet I feel I have paid a price for using my gifts. So most certainly did MJ. He got off the wall and he paid a price for it. I choose not to focus on his challenges because the real truth is between him and his God, not him and me. Likewise, for each of us, our sins, foibles and peccadilloes are ultimately between us and our God. So we should all get down off the wall and get out and do the best we can, forgetting the haters. They are as ubiquitous as flies and about just as loved.
And to those who hate to see another succeed, to see another thrive, to see another ‘live their life off the wall’ I say this: don’t hate, emulate.
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