Oz and Attitude

This morning the story of the Wizard of Oz comes to my mind.  It is the story of a scarecrow without a brain, a tin woodsman without a heart, a lion without courage and a little girl who just wants to go home.  I'm certain that everyone reading this is familiar with the movie made from the books by L. Frank Baum.

What triggered my thoughts in this direction are two-fold:  1) I have been reading the Oz books and 2) an article in BBC News this morning about hay fever.  The first is obviously linked, but the second a bit more obscure.  It has to do with the human body and how it reacts to the things around us.  It is an amazing vessel that contains this life-essence we recognize as self.

In time, through the "wisdom" of the great and powerful wizard, the characters in the Oz stories all learn that the power to overcome their shortcoming lies within.  With the aid of simple devices that give them confidence, each is able to fill their perceived need.  Ultimately it comes down to perception.

Perception is important in our lives.  We don't often think about how we perceive the things around us, but experts in marketing are fully aware of that impact.  There is a marketing concept that is stated, "perception is reality."  If we choose to believe something, it becomes real to us.  This is a dangerous, yet important factor in human character because it can work to our good or, to our detriment.

I believe the capacity for perception affecting our life is an important aspect of faith.  We either allow perception to accept or, to reject the presence of the Deity.  We can choose to interpret experience in ways that attribute certain events to God's intervention or, to mere chance, or even other convoluted cause-and-effect events.  I choose faith in a real God who loves us and intervened to provide a pathway into His presence via His Son, Jesus.

The ability we possess for allowing perception to influence and enforce our beliefs is important in other ways.  If we fill our mind with positive thoughts, we tend to be more positive; if our thoughts are negative we express that outlook in our interactions with others.  The primary impetus for the scarecrow, tin woodsman and the lion to overcome their perceived inadequacies was to become convinced that they had done so.  Dorothy's challenge was slightly different in that it was tied to the trauma-induced dream state she had entered into as a result of a knock on the head.  However, she awakened to reality when she believed that she could do so.

I believe we each can overcome our shortcomings by first recognizing them as such and then working to convince ourselves that we can conquer them.  We must learn to focus on the positive and suppress the negative.  I wonder now if I can convince myself that I don't really have hay fever and it will go away....