I Am An Idiot
Just in case you don’t know me well. Just in case you’ve never seen me in a weaker moment. Just in case you are my Mom and think I am perfect. Just in case, let me share a story with you.
Thanks to my good buddy, Chris, speaker of Techese, I use a handy dandy app called 1Password. It’s the swiss-army knife of important electronic information. It’s an electronic wallet. It generates and keeps voluminous website logins. It auto-fills forms. It’s available for all operating systems. It works on your smartphone, your computer, or your tablet. It’s totally secure. You just have to remember one super-good master password. It’s totally awesome!
Until you forget your password.
Yes. I am an idiot.
My 1Password super-good, super-stout, super-smart master password that I use multiple time every day password. Well, I came in the other day. And it was gone from mind. Like it was erased from my memory gone.
At this point some of you are giving some grace. You are thinking, “You’re not an idiot. You’re just getting old. You just forgot. Don’t worry, it gets worse. Last week I was looking for... What was I looking for?”
The rest of you who never forget a thing, of course, are still laughing at me. Thanks for that. You'll get yours in a minute here. Anyhow...
Chris turned me on to 1Password over a year ago, then he got a job with them about six months ago. Every day he helps folks in need of tech support (or a brain transplant) like me.
So, I decide to call Chris. He patiently walks me through minutes, then tens of minutes of diagnosis, testing, backups and trying as I type in every possible iteration of my password at his direction. He then repeatedly, yet kindly states things like, “Man this just doesn’t happen with this program. Are you sure you didn’t forget your password?”
He then said—not directed at me I am sure, or I hope—"This app is foolproof." To which I thought, "Unless you are dealing with a fool. Like me."
It was then I began to think back... I generated this password as an acronym of a sentence I could always remember. Bit of irony there, yes, I know. My super-good password has upper and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols. In my minds eye, I can recall sitting at my desk trying out sentence after sentence. And it hits me, “I am forgetting the first three characters in my password! I am an idiot! I am the fool it's not proof of.”
And, just like that, all characters remembered, my fingers fly and I am back in business. 1Password open. My electronic life is saved. Yet my ego emaciated.
So, maybe I needed some humility. Maybe Chris needed a story to tell his tech buddies. Or maybe I needed some humility.
Idiocy teaches humility.
Failure teaches humility.
We need humility.
Clothe yourself with humility.
All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” 1Peter 5:5