We all want to see approval in the eyes of those we love or admire, and when we don’t see that approval, it hurts. It makes us feel small and we don’t like that. So, we may constantly strive for attention anywhere we can get it to prove that we are strong, that we matter. We may become angry and vindictive, or we may even set out to harm anyone who pushes us aside. We become fighters for our self image, our own personality, without even realizing that’s what we are doing.
But our biggest battles are those inside us, the stand-off between who we want to be and how we are actually mirrored by our actions.
What do these battles–those internal swinging doors between who we are and who we want to be–hinge upon?
The human personality is beautifully complicated. There are three factors which mold it. Two of those factors, nature and nurture (heredity and environment) are those things we receive at birth and what education and social influences do to us.
But the third factor may be even more important–the way a person uses his inborn capabilities and adapts himself to his environment. This adaptation depends upon his/her own free volition. A person has the ability to inhibit certain drives, to hold in check his emotion, or at least the expression of them. He may even act upon his physique, for example by exercise or dieting. And he is capable of influencing his environment by changing it, or moving out of it.
Our ability to freely choose an action is, hands down, our greatest human gift. When we let the source of that gift–God–lead us in our battle choices, we will be so much stronger than we think we are.
Translating a World on the Edge 