It's only January 4, and already my New Year's Resolutions are getting shaky. Today is the first day since the 1st that I am performing the three activities I said I would (playing piano, blogging more, and writing my book). All three of those activities are fun, but they take work, and work is hard. It's much easier to just read or watch a movie or play video games or hang out with friends. Those things are all fine, but they are easy. Sometimes doing the hard things is better.
I suppose that's a good life principle in general. The path of least resistance is so natural but it rarely leads to improvement. The best things in life often come from hard work. Sometimes we have to do certain unpleasant but necessary things before we can get on to fun things. Schoolwork comes before video games; mowing the grass comes before softball; washing the dishes comes before movie night. But the things I'm talking about are not unpleasant as much as they are just plain hard. Consuming someone else's brilliant writing is easy and fun; trying to write your own brilliant (or at least mildly competent and interesting) work is fun but much more difficult. Listening to beautiful music is fun and easy; learning to play beautiful music is fun but much more difficult. And there is something in the human psyche that shies away from the difficult.
The difficult is unnatural. Being responsible and conscientious and "grown-up" are all unnatural. But they are critical to the development of self-discipline. Self-discipline is the key to doing difficult things, and the difficult things are often things worth doing, in some part because they reinforce self-discipline. So that is my new challenge for this year. As I move on from being a student to being a teacher and from being a youth to being a youth pastor, it is time to further cultivate self-discipline. I guess the best place to start is by doing difficult things. Who wants to join me?
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