“The greatest predictor of mortality among senior citizens in our day ends up being their grandchildren…”
A thought
by John Ortberg (2014-04-22) from his book, Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You (p. 74). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. (Click on the
title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)
Here is the end of this thought, “…ends up being their grandchildren’s
GPAs. Let me show you what he is talking
about. “Sin’s ability to disintegrate
the soul is the subject of a book by a Duke professor named Dan Ariely. In
The Honest Truth about Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone — Especially
Ourselves, Ariely is astounded by how widespread people’s tendency is to
cheat, be self-centered, lie, and be deceitful. He discovered that we are driven
by two primary motivations. One, we want to receive selfish gain. We want to
avoid pain. We want it so much that we are willing to lie or cheat or deceive
for it. We want what we want, and we’re willing to cheat to get it. Two, we
want to be able to look in the mirror and think well of ourselves. That means
we all want to view ourselves as basically good, honest, honorable people.
Clearly these two motivations are in conflict with each other.”
“Ariely’s book clearly gives empirical verification for what you and I
know happens all the time. Here is a tiny example I hope you cannot relate to:
Ariely says, ‘Over the course of many years of teaching, I have noticed that
there typically seems to be a rash of deaths among students’ relatives at the
end of the semester. It happens mostly in the week before final exams and
before papers are due.’ Guess which relative most often dies? Grandma. I am not
making this stuff up.”
He goes on, “Mike Adams, a professor at Eastern Connecticut State
University, has done research on this. He has shown that grandmothers are ten
times more likely to die before a midterm and nineteen times more likely to die
before a final exam. Worse, grandmothers of students who are not doing well in
class are at even higher risk. Students who are failing are fifty times more
likely to lose Grandma than nonfailing students. It turns out that the greatest
predictor of mortality among senior citizens in our day ends up being their
grandchildren’s GPAs. The moral of all this is, if you are a grandparent, do
not let your grandchild go to college. It’ll kill you, especially if he or she
is intellectually challenged.”
If we would just be honest instead of making up some excuse for what we
didn’t do.
How really honest are you?
How really honest are you?
Comments
Post a Comment