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Henry Ford is believed to have said: “Sometimes a mistake can be all it takes to make a valuable achievement.” Apparently paradoxical, the statement says a lot about us and what we consider at any given moment to be “a mistake.”

Meetings with people and books have shaped the space for a sometimes unequal, sometimes unsatisfactory growth between the human I am and the one I would like to be.

Besides carefree days, Christmas carols and traditional sweet breads, any respectable December also includes an evaluation of the achievements of the previous year and making plans for the future.

The miracle of modern technology today is idealised by almost everyone. The way in which technology has placed the world at our feet, ensuring that we are at the centre of the universe even while lying on our couches, and that we find solutions simply by swiping our finger along a screen, has irredeemably conquered us.

A week before he left for college, megachurch pastor Steven Furtick’s oldest son asked him, “Out of everything you’ve taught me, what’s the best advice you can give me right now?” 

“You can have any colour you want, as long as it’s black,” Henry Ford famously said, and the modern mass production revolution began. Today, however, you can customise almost anything. You can blend your foundation to match your exact skin colour. You can design your own shoes; you can personalise your car, your suit and even your M&Ms.

“...what matters is not the meaning of life in general, but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment...” (Viktor E. Frankl)

These days, we are free to believe anything and to be anything, at least in theory. However, if we gave history a closer look, we would realise that it is not beneficial for us to believe or be just anything. We agree with the biblical exhortation, often distorted by popular lore: "...test them all; hold on to what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21).