Home Discipline Turns Into World Discipline

Disciple is often learned at home.

Discipline meaning the ability to pursue a task, keep order, keep one's word, etc..

A particular attitude is often absorbed by children from their parents.

Strict practices are, by natural association, adopted.

Fiscal disciplines are also learned traits.

The practice of saving (or not), managing a budget (or not), measuring necessary expenses and contrasting want versus need (or not) are usually learned and naturally adopted at home.

If there is a lack of discipline, that void is usually also passed on.

One cannot teach what was not learned.

Neither can something unknown be made known from a void of unknowing.

Determining wants and needs.

People can sometimes want a lot, while needs are usually much fewer than the wants.

So long as needs are met, wants can be considered wonderful luxuries.

A life lived mostly through wants may not clearly appreciate that the needs are being met.

Perhaps a life lived through needs can fully appreciate wants.

Sometimes wants can be confused as needs.

Confusions are also taught at home with children naturally absorbing a convolution as 'true'.

Recently when waiting for my clothes to dry at a laundromat, I began doing some basic math.

I currently spend around $7 a week on a typical load of dirty clothes.

On its surface, that $7 weekly average comes out to $364 a year. (7 x 52 weeks in a year)

I considered the cost of purchasing a washer and dryer.

I pondered what kind of budget it would take to save up for these machines and the time to get there.

The least expensive washer and dryer run about $400 each ($800 + tax).

A more aggressive savings plan would mean a sooner purchase.

With discipline, and some sacrifices, the sooner the comfort and benefit of washing clothes at home can be realized.

I began all these calculations not for a personal purchase.

I was considering someone who may desire to eventually avoid having to leave their home.

Such a move has many advantages and benefits.

One obvious benefit is not having to leave the home.

Another is time.

Benefits come at a cost.

At the laundromat, the cost of electricity and water is included in those $7.

At home these costs are in addition to the purchase of a washer and dryer.

At either the home or the laundromat, one has to provide the detergent and static dryer sheets.

Add that expense to the yearly budget of washing clothes.

In due time, machines break down or need certain maintenance.

Such costs are 'covered' in those $7 at the laundromat.

At home I would need to pay a type of insurance, or would have to repair / perform maintenance somehow (paying someone or getting one's hands dirty).

We should always count the full cost of things, literally and spiritually speaking.

The laundromat is the full retail cost of washing clothes.

In the home, after the initial investment of the machines, the cost is lowered to near wholesale.

Over time (years), will that $7 a week average be lowered to near the cost of electricity, water, detergent, and one's time.

Doing a rudimentary search online, the average lifespan of a new washer and dryer is about 11 years.

$800 divided by 11 years is about $73 a year.

The water and detergent and electricity being ignored for the moment, notice the difference between 11 years at a laundromat ($4,004) and 11 years at home ($803).

Now you may be able to understand how laundromats are a business and, the ones that are properly managed, stay in business and provided a decent rate of return.

Owning a washer and dryer (the means), and budgeting for insurance or maintenance / upkeep, and also a savings plan for an eventual purchase of new machines beyond 11 years, one may realize the benefit of discipline.

One also realizes the heaven cost of being undisciplined.

It is this very simple example on discipline regarding washing dirty clothes that fortunes are made (or lost, or never realized).

It is simple so long as that discipline is acquired.

Counting the cost should be applied to every aspect of our lives whether they have to do with money or not.

In this way, lessons derived from proper discipline can help with bigger and more important things.

Even the purchase of things of nominal value, such as investments and assets (economically speaking).

Some things are actually liabilities but are 'sold' as assets to the undisciplined and unknowing.

Through discipline what is necessary can be defined from what is not.

What is fully beneficial and a need from what is less or simply a want.

Discipline in the most important sense develops character, heart, mind, and soul.

These are places where spiritual matters reside and are pondered.

Spiritual realities that can lead to beneficial things temporal.

The spiritual condition of a person reveals to others whether or not things temporal have become a blessing or a curse for them.

There are some comforts that come at a higher cost than one may be willing to pay when all things are considered.

Although it is wise to figure out the cost before a benefit is pursued / purchased, the cost of some things are only learned after the fact.

Benefits and comforts are alluring.

However, not everything that is permissible is actually beneficial.

I grew up having washers and dryers at home, never needing to visit public laundromats.

I grew up living in single family homes, not apartments.

I didn't even have to wash my own clothes.

I truly grew up much how a prince is portrayed in the movies.

My clothes were washed, folded, and put away for me.

Such a comfort was not fully realized until later.

The lesson of such a valuable service was not fully understood (nor appreciated), but I know it now.

This benefit, gift, and service was not earned by me, but was gifted to me.

Part of my current work has been stepping out of some comforts I was raised in.

How else am I be able to experience a certain dynamic unless I actually live it?

Visiting a laundromat once or twice in one's life I don't think qualifies as 'experience'.

But weekly visits, absorbing the environment, and talking with those who frequent such places, does make for a fuller experience.

The lessons have been viable and life-changing.

A certain depth of understanding is being realized that would not have been possible any other way.

Certain life experiences can not be gleamed from simply reading about them.

We may get an idea living vicariously through the writings of another person, but won't know fully certain things unless we live them.

Thus my first-hand experiences can not be conveyed solely through words alone.

The struggles, frustrations, joys, insights... and the beautiful and ugly things I see, the wonderful and horrible people I meet, and so on, are made real through first-hand experience.

Any person, in order to come close to the real-life experiences I write about, might have to also 'wash their own clothes' to 'know'.

Not every laundromat is made equal.

The more fancier ones located in nicer neighborhoods obviously have a particular patronizing demographic.

This first-hand experience is what God calls people to live.

God isn't looking only for talkers, but for doers.

Although there may be knowledge in mind of things Above, it is when living that knowledge out in real life that experience produces growth.

Only then does one know beyond doubt.

Much the same when considering things of economic import.

When reading inspired sources (or those claimed to be inspired), the content can be largely understood as 'theory' until it is lived out by the reader.

This is what happened after I was united to my dear and lovely wife.

I 'knew' what the Scriptures taught about loving a wife, treating her, laying down my life for her, etc..

It was not until I actually had a wife that those Scriptures 'came to life' in me like never before.

They were now more real since I was a married man and was applying them, being more open than ever in letting them change me from the inside out.

I knew full-well the idea of laying down my life for my wife, but now realize how His love took me to a deeper reality.

The message in Scripture never changed, but I did ... according to my experience.

My heart interprets that Scripture in a manner that a lack of experience was unable to teach me.

I better understood God's jealousy for His body, as I have jealousy for my body - my wife, my church.

A jealousy not rooted in insecurity or fear (as jealousy is defined according to worldly ideas), but rather a protective jealousy like God has for what is His own, what is inseparable from Him.

I know what kind of 'greater love' God describes regarding when He laid down the flesh for the sake of the souls of the world.

This same greater love was sparked in my heart through my wife.

Thus the reference of Christ and the Church mirroring a husband and his wife makes perfect and clear sense to me, now.

This is the discipline that is learned at home and transformative in the world.

This is the very basic and fundamental foundation, built upon the Truth of Christ, that keeps the world from falling apart.