Culture, Evotions, Go figure

Walking into poles

Reading Time: 2 minutes

2 Chronicles 7:14
If My people…will humble themselves…

I ran across this story in the news recently and have been intrigued with it for a few days now. Apparantly, a study done in the UK found that 1 out of every 10 people who walks while texting on their phones runs into a light pole. Of course, I’m hoping that the group that did the study (118 118 is actually the company name) will soon release on YouTube the video footage of the study. For some sick reason, I’m pretty sure that I could spend hours watching people walking into light poles.

Anyway, they did the study and came to the conclusion that they need to put padding around the light poles to protect the 10% of the texting population that can’t watch where they’re walking. There is actually a pilot “pad the poles” trial taking place along Brick Lane in London because it was determined to have the highest number of “walking and texting” injuries in the country. As one in my life has been known to say, “What the helk?” How can a study come up with such a wrong conclusion?

Pride.

“Pride on 3. Pride on 3. 1, 2, 3, Pride!” (Sorry, couldn’t resist the Biggest Loser reference.)

I’ve heard it said that if someone trips while walking on the sidewalk, they will blame the concrete layers for doing a poor job, but if they see someone else trip on that same sidewalk, they’ll think the second person is an idiot. We have a tendancy as humans to think more highly of ourselves than we ought, and that’s why humility is the foundational work that must happen in our hearts if we are to see our nation changed. At some point, we have to stop blaming everyone else for our problems and failures, and we need to start dealing with the junk in our trunk. Until we do, we’ll just keeping walking into poles in our lives, but instead of using the pain to reflect on how we failed and how we don’t want to do the same thing again, we’ll blame the pole, the phone, or anything else we can think of for “making us walk into that pole.” Heck, maybe we’ll even sue the pole manufacturer or start a grassroots movement to keep poles from hurting stupid people that can’t watch where they’re walking. We might do all those things, but what we won’t do is change, because change requires theat we look inside ourselves.

Which, of course, is awfully hard to do while texting.

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March 10, 2008by Paul Jenkins
Written by Paul Jenkins
Paul Jenkins is lead pastor of The Gathering, a community church located in beautiful downtown Albemarle, North Carolina. He's the author of God is My Air Traffic Controller and My Name's Not Lou. Paul is passionate about his wife, his 3 children, running, reading, coaching, leading people who are following Jesus, Swedish Fish and the Carolina Panthers.