Resolute

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”  Mary Oliver

“Every entity persists in its state of being - at rest or moving uniformly straight forward - except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by force impressed.”  Newton First Law of Mechanics

I was tempted to call this the most uninspiring advice on resolutions ever blog.  But I wanted to leave a little room for the possibility that you might get something out of it.  Actually, it may be the most earthy blog I’ve tried to write.  Consider it a gritty pep talk from a coach on the sidelines of your life, now a week and change into the year of your new Resolutions.

I think resolutions are great.  A new year is a fine occasion to set yourself on a path, a new goal, a new dream.  But your birthday or anniversary could work just fine too.  Or next Monday at 3 pm when you get your credit card bill and the blood drains from your face - that will be perfect also.  Which is to say, I think resolutions are truly born only when we have a moment of clarity about our lives or a moment of inspiration about the world. This could be a good moment, like reading a great novel and deciding you want to write more or leaving a movie and wanting to change the world.  Troubling moments bring us inspiration as well, like getting winded going up a flight of stairs and realizing you need to quit smoking.  Or waking up the morning after a terrible fight with your spouse and deciding you want counseling.  Put simply, resolutions must begin in a moment our hearts are engaged.  They must begin with desire, with passion.

And then they must continue with something else - a little something called suffering.   When you set yourself to wanting one thing, your life is going to have to make room for it.  Your life is going to have to change.  You will have to give up something else.  I know that’s terribly simple and obvious.  But the change, the suffering is the thing I underestimate most often in goal setting.  Our lives have momentum and they will most easily continue in a certain direction.  Its Newton’s first law: Objects in motion stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force.  So whenever you make a heart felt decision in your life, you can change its course.  But it will require physical, mental, emotional, moral exertion.  Suffering. The force to get you there must come from you.  God rarely does all the work for us. 

And suffering often feels opposed to desire.  That’s why I bring it up.  I think misunderstood suffering is the greatest threat to all our passionate endeavors, all our goals, all our resolutions. Rarely do people stop wanting their dreams.  Its more that the pain of realizing those dreams becomes too much.  It starts to feel like its no longer worth it, like its all misery and no joy.  And so we quit.  We lost heart.  All because we begin to think that suffering is our enemy.  

Here’s the funny thing, you will only suffer when the change you want is something good.  Seriously.  Nothing is going to resist you going more in debt.  Nothing will stop you from wasting more time watching TV or surfing the internet.  You will have a very easy time eating more junk food and consuming more sugary sweets in any form.  Living a half assed, wasted life will be surprisingly easy.  Its as if an unseen force in the world only opposes you when you want to change your life for the better.  Steven Pressfield (the Legend of Bagger Vance author) deals magnificently with this in his book The War of Art.  He calls this unseen force Resistance.  “Resistance obstructs movement only from a lower sphere to a higher sphere. It kicks in when we seek to pursue a calling in the arts, launch an innovative enterprise, or evolve to a higher station morally, ethically, or spiritually.” And if its not some higher calling, “Relax... Resistance will give you a free pass.”

This Resistance wants you to waste your life.  Its no wonder Jesus called this resistance Evil and said it would try to “kill, steal, and destroy” all real Life.  And its behind how we misunderstand our suffering.  If Resistance (aka Evil) can’t convince us to lay down and die in a boring life, it will try and get us to misunderstand our suffering.  Resistance wants us to believe that the suffering just isn’t worth it, that its not a path to true pleasure, that its actually making our lives miserable and not better.  It wants this because it wants to destroy any possibility that you will actually make yourself and the world better.  It is evil after all.  

Here is a real world example form my life.  

Two years ago, my wife started the year working out more, doing something called Crossfit.  I rolled my eyes at the time, thinking this to be the latest fitness fad.  But her coworkers were doing it together and so whatever.  Now this will be obvious to you once I say it but as a counselor I sit in a chair a lot.  Like all day minus the bathroom breaks.  Its a lot of emotional and mental work but very little physical work.  I shake hands. I lift my water bottle or coffee cup to my mouth.  That’s it.  So I had no leg to stand on in scoffing at her efforts.  

A month into that year, three things happened in my life.  I had a birthday.  It was an ordinary birthday, but a mile marker of sorts.  And it got my wheels churning on how I’d been living my life.  Around this same time, I started not sleeping well.  It forced me to admit just how much anxiety I lived with from all the emotional intensity of my job.  And I clearly had no physical outlet for my stress.  Add to this that my wife was looking more amazing and was clearly more fit due to the fact that she had slow down for me on walks.  This was my moment of inspiration.  Something passionate in me said I needed to move, I needed to commit to some sort of exercise, for my body and my heart.

So I started Crossfit.   

It was painful.  I found out its a lot like gym class for adults.  On steroids.  I was sore for a month straight.  Literally.  We were asked to do things like pull ups and hand stand push ups and double time jump ropes.  I could not do any of these things.  Add to this that the only class I could make because of my job was 6 AM.  And I am not a morning person.  I love night time.  This was a major adjustment for me.  This was opposed to my entire way of life, let alone my body.  My whole being had to change to make room for this new activity.  

Now almost two years later, I still get up 4 days a week at 5:30 am and workout. I did it just this morning. Its not all that much easier to be honest.  My body is sore even as I write this.  I still fight a deeply difficult battle to get out of bed.  The worst moment for me comes on the drive to the gym.  I am tired, my car is cold usually, and I think about all the exertion I will endure in just a few minutes.  Nothing about this is easy.  I am just used to the mental battle.  And Resistance knows I don’t make any decisions to quit on the car ride there.  Or I would.  And I now know all too well the sweet reward of my body being tired because it spent its energy on behalf of something really good.

Dream really big.  And then get to work suffering for it, armed with the knowledge that Evil wants you to roll over and die a boring wasted life, but God is on the side of all good endeavors.  May this make you more resolute, more determined in your dreams.