A friend wrote today about using selected quotations as inspirations to try to live better, to handle his shortcomings better. As a short guy, I feel familiar with shortcomings. I was quite unhappy when in the 7th or 8th grade, when I realized I had probably attained all the height I was going to have. Of course, shortcomings can pop up in many areas, not just physical height.
Especially with modern men, I wonder about longcomings. A shortcoming is a fault, such as losing my temper easily or being too loose or too tight with money. By contrast, consider a longcoming, a particular strength or virtue that one tends to exhibit. It seems difficult for any of us to observe strengths and virtues we exhibit. Just about any good quality or habit that I often demonstrate I can pooh-pooh talk down, dismiss. I can find better examples than I am and tell myself that I don't do as well as them, that I am not really an example of such and such a good quality.
I want to just gently accept that I tend to be generous or calm or whatever good quality my wife and kids and friends tell me I show.
This general subject, my goods and bads, very much relates to much Christian religious practice. Given the right mind set, I might have decided long ago that ANY good things are part of the messages from Satan or from my sinful self or my bottomless male ego. At my current sceptical age, I would like to be a little more accurate and note my longcomings as well as my shortcomings. Further, I posit middle-comings, properties or propensities that are neither especially poor or wonderful but that are characteristic. For me, such a middle coming might be steady interest in eating good-tasting, high nutrition foods without getting into morality or Body Mass Index. Or, in search of another example, a middle coming might be steady and interested awareness of the time of day and relying on the clock hour to direct myself to food, drink, rest, reading or tv.
