Think Before You Click

I CAN still vividly recall how my dad used to enjoy teaching us proverbial phrases. He got a book, I now forget the title, and showed us some pictures accompanied by wisdom-filled sayings.

One of them had an amusing caricature of a man jumping into a lake. He is shocked when he realizes too late that he is diving right into the hungry mouth of a smiling crocodile. The cartoon was labeled: Look before you leap!

I remembered this adage as I re-read Pope Francis’ address to the youth in the University of Sto. Tomas last 18th January this year. In a youthful tone, the Pope encouraged young and old to learn how to love.

Unfortunately, this youthful experience can encounter interferences within and without the heart. Thus, recently with the youth of Paraguay, Francis warned them about the “numerous snares that trap and enslave the heart: exploitation of people, the lack of the basic resources to survive, drug addiction, sadness, all these things remove freedom.”

In order to avoid these snares, one has to observe the following steps suggested by the Holy Father: to think well, feel well, and lastly to act well. This sequence is the secret to learning how to love.

This brings me back to the saying “Look before you leap!” How often do we love without following this wise sequence? How often do we ACT that is, by ‘clicking’, ‘liking’, ‘uploading’ and ‘downloading’ etc., without first THINKING?

How many virtual misadventures occur because one has not ‘thought before jumping into cyberspace’? I’m not only referring to pornography, hate, and terrorist sites, and violent video games, etc. I’m more concerned about how much time, resources, and opportunities are wasted because one has not thought wisely before acting.

The act of loving is undoubtedly something powerfully associated with the heart of every human being. This is because every person was created by God for love and each one naturally wants to be loved! But it is important to give the heart the love it truly deserves and not only what it whimsically desires. Otherwise, it will be trapped by lower forms of enslaving and corrupting loves.

In order for the heart to desire and possess a genuine love, it requires enlightenment from a formed intellect. This light presents what is truly and authentically desirable to the will. A man can never desire something that he does not know. Only when the intellect presents something good to the will can the heart now have an object to desire and tend to.

Knowing what is good, however, isn’t sufficient. The will must move towards the possession of what is desired. Now, sometimes (as experience shows) the will isn’t very inclined towards the arduous good (work, exercise or the virtues) and tends more towards the gravitational pull of instant gratification or quick fixes (comfort, pleasure, laziness or the vices). Only with a formed intellect and a disciplined will can a person freely choose a good that will truly fulfill him.

One concrete tool that can be employed to help us think well and feel well is to follow a daily personal plan or schedule. Given that we have so many things in mind and in heart, we cannot allow anything to simply derail us from more important tasks and duties.

St. Josemaría, would say, “When you bring order into your life your time will multiply, and then you will be able to give God more glory, by working more in his service. (The Way, no. 80)” This order naturally begins within us by dominating flights of fancy and laziness. But having a schedule that we sincerely follow can be a helpful means to keep us on the right track.

This daily schedule could contain the basic components of prayer, study-work, family, and rest. When we strive to keep to it, we will grow in self-discipline and when we lift up the things we do for love of God, then we grow spiritually. St. Josemaría, often considered a useful personal evaluation that helped him carry out his duties: “Ask yourself many times during the day: Am I doing at this moment what I ought to be doing? (Ibid., no. 772)”

Perhaps, Pope Francis’ prayer in Paraguay may be a handy prayer to say every time we are tempted not to do what we ought to do, and not to be in what we must be doing: “Lord Jesus, give me a free heart, one that is not enslaved by the traps of the world, that it may not be enslaved by comfort, the lie that it won’t be enslaved by a good life, that it may not be a slave to vices, and a false freedom of doing what I please at every moment.”