Small Things Done Consistently …
It is one of the most vivid memories of my childhood. The memory is not about the precise time, I was in either third or fourth grade. The location is easy, I was attending a parochial school in a middle-class neighborhood in a Midwestern city. I remember the classroom, but not the teacher. I don’t remember the specific lesson, although I’m sure it was a religion class.
I remember that at that point in my life I was a devout Catholic, an altar boy, determined that I would go to the seminary and become a priest. In the basement of our four-family flat, I had built an altar and would practice saying Mass as though I were already a Priest.
Towards the end of religion class one day I had the following thought,
“Please Lord, give me a challenge, a great challenge that requires the ultimate sacrifice. I will gladly give my life for my faith. I will gladly become a martyr to ensure my place at Your side. But, don’t ask me to be good forever. The temptations will be too great. I know I will fail, and never achieve my rightful place in Heaven.”
There never was one great challenge. I never entered the seminary. I never became a Priest. I succumbed to far too many of the temptations along the way.
As I look at my life today, there is much that I am grateful for. There are regrets as well.
For some reason, I am in a period of searching for meaning and knowledge. I seem to be reading constantly, in search of something. I recently came across an author named Jocko Willink, a retired Navy Seal. While reading his book, “Discipline Equals Freedom” I found the following passage:
“It wasn’t in a war. It wasn’t in a battle. It isn’t in a melee of fire and destruction that most of us succumb to weakness. We are taken apart, slowly. Convinced to take an easier path.
Enticed by comfort. Most of us aren’t defeated in one decisive battle. We are defeated one tiny, seemingly insignificant surrender at a time that chips away at who we should really be. It isn’t that you wake up one day and decide that’s it: I am going to be weak. No. It is a slow incremental process. It chips away at our will — it chips away at our discipline. We sleep in a little later. We miss a workout, then another. We start to eat what we shouldn’t eat and drink what we shouldn’t drink. And, without realizing it — one day, you wake up and you have become something that you never would have allowed. Instead of strong — you are weak. Instead of disciplined — you are disorganized and lost. Instead of moving forward and progressing — you are moving backward and decaying. And those things happen without you seeing them. Without you recognizing them.”
Jocko’s writings confirmed my greatest fears as a young boy. Today I like to think of myself as more spiritual than religious. I’m okay with that.
I still like to think of myself as an athlete. I work out religiously. But I eat what I shouldn’t eat, too often. I drink what I shouldn’t drink, too often. In many areas I am disciplined, but there are other areas where I am and have been weak, and in some ways have become something I never would have allowed.
I need to read the next chapter in Jocko’s book. My sense is that he is going to inspire me to address those areas where I have been weak. I didn’t get where I am overnight, I wasn’t in a war, or a battle and my assumption is that I am not going to correct my issues overnight. I think what Jocko is going to tell me is to become more disciplined in the small ways to address the big issues, that small things done consistently become big things.
