The Danger of Extremes

It's come to my attention recently how much we tend to live life by extremes.  We are either on top of the world or at the bottom of the trash heap.  We either want fast food ready almost before we order or we want a long leisurely multi-course dinner served to us over an extended period of time.  But the extremes don't stop there.  They infect our language and the way we live our lives.  We become so accustom to the extremes that when we are in between them (which let's face it, unless we are creating our own drama to exude a false sense of the extreme we spend most of our lives in the in between) we feel less than enough.  We feel bland, unexciting, not worth anyone's attention.

As someone who grew up in church the extremes were defined as the mountain top experience and the valleys of life.  The mountain top experiences were the "Praise God!" "Hallelujah!" moments while the valley times were the moments you were somberly asking everyone for prayer and if it were extremely personal it was the infamous silent prayer request.  The in between times didn't really rate acknowledgement.  Nothing exciting was happening, but then again neither was anything bad.  So you just coasted along content to maintain the status quo.

So, you might ask, what is the problem with those extremes?  Don't we need the rejoicing of the mountain top experiences and the reality checks of the valley moments?  Isn't there a time for fast food and a time for the five course meal?

Of course, in Ecclesiastes we're given a very lengthy reminder that there is a time for everything.  The top of the world moments should be celebrated and the moments of deep struggle need to be acknowledged, but the danger comes when we feel the constant need to live in one or the other.

One of my favorite places to vacation is in the Smokey Mountains.  I remember several years ago a friend and I spent the July 4th weekend in Gatlinburg and took the time to drive to the tallest peak of the Smokey Mountains National Park.  It was a lengthy drive to get to the top of the mountain and once we got there it was a short drive to crest the peak of the tallest point and begin the descent toward the valley.

I suppose that what stands out to me about that is the fact that life mimics the mountain range.  While we have those moments of ecstasy and the conflicting moments of deep despair, neither is where we spend the bulk of our time.  Most of the time is spent making our way to one or the other of those extremes and in the overall snapshot of our life we don't spend great amounts of time (even if the valley moments seem to last forever some days) in either extreme.

So what happens if we start to change our thought process from needing to be in one extreme or the other to being ok with where we are at that moment in time?  What if we learn to celebrate the mountain top moments, properly acknowledge the valley experiences, but also to value the in between times when we are headed to or from one of the extremes?  It creates an interesting experience as we learn to be present and experience each moment of the life we're given.  Personally, I think it means we begin to experience the extremes in a much healthier way because rather than living from one of them to the next we are experiencing the journey that it takes to get from one to the other.  When we choose to only experience life by extremes it's like reading the Cliff Notes version of a classic book.  Oh, you get the general idea of the storyline, but you miss the heart of the characters the author created.  You miss the tension that builds from scene to scene so the climactic end to the story doesn't hold the same excitement as if you had experienced the entire story as the author intended.

So what's the danger in living our lives in extremes?  If we are bouncing from extreme to extreme we are missing the opportunity to experience our own lives as they are taking place the way the Author of our lives intended them to be experienced.  Those in between moments are there to provide us with the chance to get to know the other characters that God has introduced into our story in a unique way and for a purpose.  And as with any well-written story, if we fail to take advantage of the opportunity to engage and develop relationships with key characters as they are introduced we miss vital elements that are essential to the intended development of our own story.