Saturday, April 12, 2008

Let's Just Stick To The Outine

I know someone who checks his emails 25 times a day, and spends the rest of his day just surfing the web. 15 years ago this was someone who was deeply involved with WHO, ran for Congress, and had a great reputation in his line of work. Now he just sits and wastes the little time we all have. He constantly states that he desperately wants to go back to Europe and spend several months there, yet continually makes excuses not to. When there are no more excuses, he checks his mail. Or surfs the net. When advised to do read a book; just to do something, anything, he gets bored midway through and goes back to the same old routine.

The draw of comfort, doing something because it's easy, seems to be so strong. It's like a bear trap. Once you fall into it, you have to practically tear yourself apart just to get free from its clutches. Almost everywhere I look, I see so many people that refuse to put in work, just because it is easier to sit on their ass. We only get one shot at life, it's such a waste to be too lazy to do anything with it.

This is not about physical employment, but the act of employing your mind to do something. Instead of finding a way to take that trip you have wanted to take for years, you go check your email. Instead of finally keeping a New Years Resolution to eat right and start exercising, you say "tomorrow", and go watch TV.

I just hope I don't start making the same mistake. If I do, I hope that I have surrounded myself with enough people honest enough to give a swift kick in the ass. Don't think of why you can't, think of how you can. Start the journey.

"What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task."
-Viktor E. Frankl

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