Be the Tortoise

You know the story about the tortoise and the hare? Slow and steady wins the race. Well I'm not the tortoise. I don't do slow and steady. I do fast and erratic. Mostly erratic. A tortoise will do a little bit every day and put a check mark on their list of to do items. I will do that for about three days and then forget I even made a list.

This is a challenge in my life that I haven't completely mastered. From the outside it looks like laziness, and honestly sometimes it does from the inside too. Saying I'm lazy doesn't really do me justice though. I will work hard if the circumstances are right.

I do my job diligently every day. I'm not saying I never slack because I do when things are slow. But if I have work do do I tear through it. I'm not going to goof off while someone is paying me.

If there is a deadline I will generally meet it. It has be a real deadline though. No fake deadline will do. A great example of this iswhen my parents brought down my dad's old truck. There was a massive amount of work to do to make room in the garage. I did it though because the truck was coming and I wasn't backing down. I felt like they would get rid of it if I didn't get it in to my garage and that was not acceptable. Since then the garage has descended into a form of chaos worthy of televising on Hoarders.

Recently I had a bit of an epiphany on this subject.

Just like my bit about the rough draft I think we have to lay down some initial work in order to have huge breakthrough moments, We have to be the tortoise. As a friend of mine that deals with the same kind of cyclical nature told me it's all about discipline. When he told me that I didn't really want to hear it. Honestly I still don't, but I think I can work with it if I approach it like a rough draft. My point is that if you don't do the day to day work when you get that burst of creative energy you will have nothing to work with. Say I wrote a page of a novel a day. It's crap but I do it. Then one night I get a burst of energy and revise it into a beautiful narrative. If I hadn't taken the time to write the crap draft I wouldn't have had anything to work with when the burst came.

I think this can apply to your whole life. Take my closet for instance. I have two filing cabinets setting in the closet. My plan is to organize all my papers, Mackenzie's art and so on in these cabinets. I never do this because the closet is a total disaster. I can't even get to the filing cabinets. If I had the discipline to clean out the closet I would have some place to put everything when the overpowering urge to clean off my desk came Right now all the stuff from my desk just gets shoved in another pile and the cycle continues.

Now where did that list go?

At Least I Got Out Of the Truck

Several weeks ago my office was going to the ground breaking for one of our larger projects. It was the end of the day so we all took separate cars. Two of the guys left slightly before me. I pulled out of our parking lot and came to a complete stop. Traffic was backed up from about the middle of the hill. Through a drizzle of rain I could see a pickup truck on its side and another truck with a trailer on the shoulder of the road. There were people standing by both trucks. As I watched a man came running up from somewhere behind me.

I assumed someone was calling 911.

I sat for a beat or two and decided I needed to be sure. Quickly parking the truck I walked out in to the rain. The first thing I saw was a man in a suit pacing around on the phone. He was obviously talking to emergency services. So that was taken care of. I stood around for a few minutes accessing the situation. I didn't see anything I could help with and started to feel a little dumb for getting out of the truck. My only contribution was getting someone's attention when another person brought a blanket to cover up the guy at the bottom of the truck on it's side.

Even though I felt a little dumb I'm still proud of myself for getting out of the truck. There may be people that naturally react to an event like this by running up to the wreck. I am not that person. My first instinct is the same as my friend's from the office that got to the wreck before me. Stay in my truck and let someone else handle it. I don't want to be the person that stays in the truck. I want to be the kind of person that is ready to help.

Since that is not my natural state I have to work on it. Not only because of the type of person I want to be but someday I might be faced with a situation where doing the right thing will be extremely difficult. If I haven't practiced doing the right thing I might not be ready when the moment comes. If I find out a young boy was raped will I do the right thing or protect my career like Joe Paterno. Will I go along with the killing of millions of innocents because I'm just trying to get through the day? Can I give up enough of myself to make the type of sacrifice my teacher Christ would ask of me? Right now? Probably not, but I hope I can practice enough that if the time comes I'll be able to do the right thing.

Everyone should read this:
The Greatest Crimes Against Humanity Are Perpetrated by People Just Doing Their Jobs

Romantic Love Is Not Enough

If “Divorce Should Be Considered Murder” how do you stay married through all the ups and downs of life? For me it's because I was raised to believe divorce just isn't an option. Baring something tragic like Kay cheating on me – extremely unlikely - I will be married to her for the rest of my life. It's just stubbornness on my part. I'll do anything to stay married. Give up myself. Go to counseling. Whatever it takes I'm in this forever. It's hard though. Particularly when kids are involved. But that stubborn determination to stay married isn't enough. I could end up miserable if that was it. The ultimate answer is I love Kay. What is love though?

In the American vernacular love is intense liking. A romantic feeling that you fall in to. Romantic love will not make it through the long haul of marriage though. Romantic love does not get up at three A.M. to take care of the baby. It doesn't work a dead end job because it's the right thing to do. Romantic love is based on a feeling. Feelings come and go and come again. You will fall out of that kind of love.

The love that will see you through rich or poor is a choice.

It is a choice to put someone’s needs before your own. Their happiness is as important if not more important than your own. At the same time it is one giant choice and a series of choices. In the beginning you make the big choice to love a person. Then almost daily you have to choose to keep loving. Some days are hard. Some days are easy. You have to keep choosing to love though.

You might be asking how do you make the switch from romantic love to forever love. I'm afraid I can't answer that. I want to. I want a nice simple answer you can apply to each of your relationships. It's just too complicated for that. The factors are so large and complicated I don't think we can figure it out on a conscious level. Romantic love, physical attraction, compatibility and similar personal philosophies go in to it, and probably a million other things. As my mom told me long ago. You'll just know. Yea I know that answer sucks, but it's true. You have to trust yourself and look deep inside. I believe if you are honest with yourself you knew that each relationship that failed was going to.

I'm So Over Violence

Why is violence considered entertainment? The fan fiction Punisher film “Dirty Laundry” is awesome, but also disturbingly graphically violent. Not that I was shocked by that. I knew it would be going in. Considering this type of entertainment and the rash of violent shootings I'm starting to wonder what kind of people our society is forming us into.

Let me be clear that I am not saying there is a direct relationship between violent forms of entertainment and actual violence. Everyone except the seriously deranged can tell the difference between a video game and the real world. Healthy people playing violent video games do not walk out their door and start popping people.

My point is that we seem to be a war mongering, brutal violence is entertainment, let's do worse things to the bad guys than they did to us up kind of people. Revenge is our motivation not justice or love.

I have to try to distance myself from this culture. I'm not going to go hermit myself and the family off in the woods, but my goal is to be as like Christ as I can be. Jesus taught to turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:38-40), put down your sword Peter (John 18:10-12) and Paul said to feed your enemy (Romans 12:20). This is not modeled in our culture. Quite the opposite actually. Remember the shooting in the Amish school? They forgave that man for a horrible crime. Instead of being impressed by the Christ like love they showed we think (myself included) what the hell is wrong with them.

Maybe we should ask that of ourselves?