The Power of Selectivity

Jesus was pretty selec­tive but not snooty. He befriended the friend­less and some­times ignored the pow­er­ful and pop­u­lar. Much of the time he was alone in the hills. He was no social climber. He had friends and enjoyed great wed­ding feasts. He spoke of ban­quets and par­ties in his para­bles, but he was con­spic­u­ously absent from many scenes. He did not hang around polit­i­cal types — hop­ing to absorb a lit­tle power — nor did he schmooze with the reli­gious lead­ers of his day for spe­cial priv­i­leges at the Tem­ple. He was his own per­son — his own man.
There is a huge power in selec­tiv­ity. It con­trols the mar­kets, the tax sys­tem, and the flow of human ener­gies in gen­eral. There are many things that are unmar­ketable now, because peo­ple are just not inter­ested in them any­more. The land­fills are full of out-of-date elec­tronic devices and yesterday’s styles. Watch the price of a com­mod­ity drop when it gets too high. Peo­ple adapt. They choose other things.
Being emo­tion­ally and intel­lec­tu­ally selec­tive holds even greater poten­tial. Stress reduc­tion comes from tun­ing out what you can­not con­trol. For­give­ness is turn­ing loose of some past event and ignor­ing it when it comes float­ing through your mind again. Choos­ing your thoughts is a lit­tle like hav­ing a men­tal remote con­trol. Unhappy thought? Click! Happy thought.
I am a bit of a behav­ior­ist. I reward the good and ignore the bad. Pro­gres­sively, I rent movies made by lesser known pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies. Those are the ones that do not have over­paid actors with obnox­ious polit­i­cal or reli­gious views. Quite frankly, I have found all sorts of very good, very clean movies, but it has taken some effort. My money goes toward any spirit or men­tal­ity I pre­fer to pro­mote. Mass cul­ture func­tions only because it has mass atten­tion. The nar­row door that Jesus rec­om­mended is about indi­vid­u­als find­ing other paths out of the great giant trance. Rest assured, on the other side, there is qual­ity living.