Resolutions: Everyday

As I sit here waiting for sleep to quell my usual Sunday night anxiety, my eyes wont close and my brain won't slow. My late Sunday nights, caused by staying up late and sleeping in through the weekend usually result in a mind racing with possibilities, doubts, vague hope and prolonged unrest.

It's funny/sad that I took the time a few weeks ago to drive up to the mountains for some personal reflection/worship goal-writing and now I can't even remember where I put the notebook containing all of my profound resolutions.

There's a strange phenomenon at the gym around this time of the year. Each year, the first week in January finds the gym packed and buzzing with sweaty determination. Christmas present memberships are redeemed and bodies are changing. There's a waiting list for the stair-stepper and a line at the front counter.

Just a few weeks into the month however, the gym returns to about normal and stays this way until the first warm days of summer.

What happens between the beginning of a new year and a month into it? We lose focus, we forget about ambition and change and we return to the comfortable myopia that's kept us from achieving much of anything during the past year.

It's just so easy to stay comfortable and afraid. I'm confident that if we found a way to harness the drive and passion of new beginnings, we could change the amount of our lives every single day. What if we change our life, everyday?

I submit that every single day we're alive is an awe-inspiring gift from God. If we changed our life, each one of those days the power would be unstoppable. It's easy to neglect some anonymous, distant "goal" but what if everyday, we tore away small chunks of these goals, consuming them, achieving them, and ready for tomorrow, a new day to change our life. I'm confident that this can be done, every single day.

This poem has spoken to me today in a beautiful and life-changing way.

I have studied many times
The marble which was chiseled for me --
A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.
In truth it pictures not my destination
But my life.
For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment;
Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;
Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.
Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.
And now I know that we must lift the sail
And catch the winds of destiny
Wherever they drive the boat.
To put meaning in one's life may end in madness,
But life without meaning is the torture
Of restlessness and vague desire --
It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.

Edgar Lee Masters