@HomewithDean - Homily 11/13

One thing I always want to try to avoid in these closing thoughts is offering up oversimplified advice or trite answers to life’s big questions. Granted, oversimplifying is hard to avoid when you only have three minutes to say something but one of the ways I try to avoid it is by talking honestly about myself more than sermonizing at you. By the way, I am certain I have failed at that. I apologize. I am trying. <br /><br />Oversimplified advice is perhaps more dangerous than no advice at all. Like when you’re considering taking a risk or leaping out into the unknown it seems there’s always somebody in your ear saying,“you better know what you’re doing.” I’ve never understood why someone would say that. When you’re brand new at a thing you literally don’t know what you’re doing, so how can you know what you’re doing? Almost six years ago, I had to make a decision about doing less design work in order to carve out time to be on the radio. “You better know what you’re doing,” said the voices. “I don’t! I absolutely don’t,” said I in response. “What are you talking about? I’ve never done this before! Of course I don’t know what I’m doing!” The fact is, it took nearly three of the last six years for me to even begin feeling like I know what I’m doing. Some of you are saying right now, “Dean, clearly you still don’t know what you’re doing.” Probably very true! <br /><br />The point is, some advice is better left not given, or perhaps more importantly, not listened to. Would I like to know what I don’t know when I really need to know it? Uhh … yeah … but I am well over halfway through this life and it hasn’t happened so far. Wouldn’t it be cool if somebody who absolutely knows every detail about your future kept showing up at critical moments in order to advise you? That’s why I suspect we’re not going to discover how to time travel before I die. Because if I could travel back in time I know for a fact that older me would be right here, right now, helping this me avoid my next blunder. I’d be my own guardian angel. Not