Love the Path
In life, we often have to walk difficult paths to achieve our desired outcomes. Whether at home, at work, spiritually or in our relationships, getting from where we are to the place that we dream about requires an ongoing commitment and thousands of steps. Though it’s easy to be motivated in the beginning, how can we best sustain our good works?
Though the individual steps in our journey may not be desirable or even enjoyable in and of themselves, if we love the path, success is assured. Armed with the knowledge that the path terminates at our objective, we can be confident that by following it, we will reach our desired ends.
Every step of a marathon is not a joy, but crossing the finish line always is.
Foretaste
Although easily forgotten in the midst of this week’s kickoff of the end-of-year holidays, the intent of Halloween, All Saints' Day, and All Souls' Day is to remind us of our mortality. Nearing the end of the liturgical year, the Sunday readings focus on eschatology, or the end times. Throughout the Bible, and in the ministry of Jesus, the fact that our time on Earth is transitional is never hidden. We are all walking on pilgrimage, with judgement assured when our journey meets its logical end.
Though it may seem foreboding, reaching the end of that journey should be cause for joy and hope. Our lives are filled with difficulties, sadness, and sufferings that God never intended. It was only through the entrance of sin into our world, and our complicity with it, that these sorrows have befallen us. Still, although sin and sadness are real, we can choose even today to live as God intended. We can love God’s commandments and experience a wholesome, fulfilling and joyful life as the saints have shown us.
Though true, this is all a bit academic. Time ticks away slowly, and it’s hard to keep the mind focused on an eternity of peace and exuberance. This is especially true when the kids have been fighting all day, you still have to put together a grocery order, the cars need to be waxed, and you have a major project due in two days. God designed every facet of our bodies with great purpose and intent, and He understands the challenge of focusing the mind in the midst of stress and a to-do list pouring off the page.
It’s one of the reasons we go to Mass every week. Not only do we need the rejuvenation and the break, but we need reminders of our future at regular intervals. Why do we not lie, cheat, and steal as others do? Because this peace, this calm, this celebration is what we were created for. It’s the great foretaste of what is to come, if only we run the race and win.
Life is not easy, and in moments of stress, exhaustion, and temptation, failure is the path of least resistance when we lose sight of where we’re aiming. There’s a forever of calm and peace waiting for us if only we choose it.
A Job Well Done
There are plenty of ways to measure our work. Volume, quality, quantity, we’re never short on metrics. I think the best way to evaluate how you’re doing on the job is by the sense of accomplishment you carry away.
External factors always dominate, but your personal pride is a wonderful barometer. Do you feel like you’ve done a job well done? Have you contributed your best work, your best ideas, and your best efforts to your team’s common goal?
Work is an important component of human dignity. It’s the ability to use your knowledge, skills, and abilities in a diversified economy to improve the lives of others. No matter what your role is in the division of labor, if you’ve done your best work and helped others, then that’s a job well done.
Fresh Start
With the house unpacked, and the children returned, today is our family’s fresh start. We are the same people, with the same jobs and school schedule, in a completely new environment.
It’ll take us time to adjust, to figure it all out, but this fresh start feels like a real opportunity. A new house, a new town, a new parish, it’s a chance to look at everything. I wrote last week that I had to touch every single thing that we owned when I unpacked. Now, I have to touch every single routine.
What do I want our days to look and feel like? How do I want to keep building my relationship with my children, expanding their minds, and exploring our world?
We get so few fresh starts in life. When they do come alone, it’s best to seize them.
Every Single Thing
We moved last week. Although I had the benefit of a whole crew to box up our home and relocate it, once the boxes were in the correct room, the crew left, and it was up to me.
The last several days have been chaotic, waking up early, going to bed late, and little to know schedule. I’ve had to physically touch every single item that we own, and decide on a new place to store it.
We grow numb to the magnitude of our property, to the amount of stuff that resides inside our four walls. We have everything we need, everything that could make us comfortable, entertained, even productive.
Moving always inspires people to slim down, and this move was no different for us. It was an exhausting process, even with the kids away. Although I’ve declared that I’m never moving again, I probably will. Hopefully, between now and then, I’ll be more mindful about the things that I buy and the stuff that I bring into my life.
Natural Conclusions
There’s something about waypoints in our lives that lead us to become pensive. We reflect, look back, and plan for a brighter tomorrow. These endings come at regular intervals and for all sorts of reasons. They’re yet another reminder, in our busy frenetic world, to slow down and think.
I’ve reached one such moment. Everything in my life is about to change, as we set off on a new adventure. As I look back and the years that we’ve been in our current town, I start to see the good in things again. Those ordinary moments that shaped our family, the progress we made in taking care of our home, and the business that I’ve grown all take on new meanings for me.
We do not know the plans that God has for us, but with the benefit of hindsight, we can see the genius of it all. The little, seemingly insignificant events that ended up being turning points. I’m grateful for them all, and ready to see what’s coming next.
Bend, Don’t Break
There’s only so much work that I can do in a week. Every Monday, I enter into the new week with a set number of hours that I want to work. If I work evenly throughout the week, my template leaves me enough time for all the other things that I need to do, with the weekend free to boot.
The problem is that life is never that clean. Although a tightly regimented schedule feels right when written down on paper, it immediately gets mugged by reality when put into practice.
The truth is, no schedule can withstand the demands of our days. Kids wake up sick, urgent tasks percolate to the top of our lists, and my manicured email inbox gets wrecked as soon as everyone else gets to their desk.
Setting unrealistic expectations only increases the sense of drowning that we all feel, when in the moment we’re trying to decide the next thing to do, but there’s too much happening all at once.
The only way to succeed each day is to inject plenty of flexibility. There may be an “ideal” time to get something done, but there are also plenty of other acceptable times, too. Most importantly, there’s a limit to how much you can and should do each day. When you hit that limit, stop, defer everything to another day, and move on.
Scriptural Confession
I went to confession last weekend for the first time in many months. I try to go every other week, but things have been crazy busy. The priest was a visitor, whom I’d never met before. In our conversation, he quoted an obscure Bible verse, Malachi 3:8.
Thanks to my completion of the Bible in a Year last year, I immediately had context. After finishing my penance, I pulled out my Bible, and read the whole chapter.
What’s always incredible about the Bible is how timeless it is. It’s a story, a history, of a nation of people who are just like us. I may have better technology and living standards than they did, but I make the same mistakes.
Despite my failings, God always reminds me of the unfathomable depths of His mercy, greater than any sin I may commit. And if I doubt, I can read the words He spoke to the prophet Malachi thousands of years ago and half a world away, as if He spoke them just for me, “…put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts; see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing.”
Five Minutes
Spirituality is a major component of what it means to be human. We have a connection with our Creator that is far more personal and intimate than any other in the created world. The main channel of building and developing this relationship is through our prayer life. As with all things in life, it ebbs and flows, and it becomes far too easy to let ourselves get in the way.
A prayer life is the cumulative efforts that we make to spend time with God. But prayer is far more simple. If you have five minutes to be quiet, to be still, and to raise your mind to God, that’s all you need.
Building anything great happens one step at a time. You don’t need a plan to get from where you are to your ideal prayer life. You just need five minutes, today, to start.
Potential Energy
The most enduring success that any of us can enjoy is often the result of extensive efforts over time. Years of quiet, diligent work results in “overnight success.” Although those around us can see the finished product, almost everyone misses the tiny wins that led to victory.
Sustaining any good habits over time, in pursuit of a personal goal, is never frictionless. Life ebbs and flows, with easy days and hard days. On the hard days, it’s easy to quit, especially if progress isn’t apparent. When we reach plateaus, we lose the instant feedback loop, and backsliding becomes a viable choice.
In those plateaus, it can be helpful to think of our good habits as potential energy. As I continue to store up daily reps of good choices, I build towards a brighter future. At some point, my body chemistry will be primed and ready to start losing weight again. Would I rather be firing on all cylinders or have to start cold? At some point, my spiritual life will reach spring again. Would I rather meet the change as a springboard to greater virtue, or have to start all over building a habit of prayer?
We can’t always see the change happening, especially within ourselves. The only thing that we can perceive is our daily actions, and the trajectory that they send us on. We can either be primed and ready for the next phase of growth, or start behind the 8-ball. Storing up potential energy now prepares us for the explosion of personal growth that’s right around the corner.