Tuesdays with Morris

Last night, in a conversation, I was reminded of how much of our learning is impacted by our environment. We all learn behaviors from those we are surrounded by…Sometimes we aren’t aware of the life patterns that we pick up along the way…But, we are definitely impacted by our environment.

Some of us behave and speak in certain manners because that’s how our parents or close friends behave and speak. Some of us eat certain foods, follow certain diets because these are the foods and diets we followed as we grew up. The list of learned behaviors could go on and on.

So, we pick up all of this “stuff” along the way. We learn without realizing that we are learning.

And, yet, in the church, we tend to reduce learning to certain formats (the sermon, the Bible study, etc). And, we’re often oblivious to the thought that people might be learning along the way…picking up our language, our behavior patterns, our mindset.

We need to think about the impact of learning by simply being around others. The environmental experience can have a tremendous impact on what we learn about living this life.

If we see others living their lives for a reason, we just might learn something about what it truly means to live. However, if we simply see people spewing quotes without any action, we will also learn something about what it means to live. Which message do we want people to pick up from our lives?