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Dropping "I"

Bound (by vladstudio) During bible study we've been talking a bit about not talking about me. 

One of the most important things I learned from my high school English teach, Mrs. Toliver, was that you should never use "I" in a paper.  Don't say something like

I think most experts agree that using proper English is unnecessary in the Internet age.

Instead simply say

Most experts agree that using proper English is unnecessary in the Internet age.

As Mrs. Toliver would say, "I know it's what you think, you wrote it. Obviously it's what you think."

I began thinking about this a bit more and how it applies to regular life as well.  The stupid, overused saying goes "There's no 'I' in team." But really we need to change our perspective entirely and think outside individual units.  These units could be individuals, teams, businesses, nations or any other defined body. Instead we need to look at the whole of everything, every human being as part of our "unit".  We need to drop a team focus and instead focus on the entire organism that is all life.

In every action we should be thinking, how does this impact humanity?  For every great thing that comes our way, or works out, recognize those gifts are from the whole.

This is one of the biggest steps people take when they go past accepting that there is a God and decide to actually follow him.  We are tasked to stop thinking about "I" and "me" and instead focus on both "Him" and "Everyone" in every thing that we do.

This change in thought is one of the hardest things to keep true over time.  Western society constantly pushes "I".  "You need this gadget" or "How does that impact me" are used in our vocabulary every day.

I wonder what it would be like to drop "I" from our vocabulary for an entire week?  What if we had to attribute everything to "we" instead?  How would that constant hint to focus outside ourselves feel?  How would it change our perspective on the world?  Would we finally recognize that there is something far greater than ourselves which matters?

Peace,
+Tom

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