The Challenge: To Sustain the Forward Momentum and To Keep Moving On

I just spent the last two days sorting out the very jumbled contents of three boxes of miscellaneous tools, whatsits, nails and assorted screws. I was trying to organize what I had and trying to make them fit into three tool boxes. Until two days ago, I would studiously avoid even looking at the three boxes, because I knew that once I did, I would feel guilty. This chore had at the top of my pain-in-the-rear “to do” list for quite awhile and I was avoiding doing it for as long as I could.

However, two days ago I bit the bullet and just dived in. Once I got started sorting through the stuff, I found it wasn’t all that bad. Just one of those things you have to start doing. Once you have, it is no big deal to just work through the job until you are done. When I had completed the sort and organized the tool boxes, I think I even felt a sense of real accomplishment. More than that, I really felt like a hundred pound weight had been lifted from off of my shoulders.

There were other things which I also needed to take care of. Just finishing one thing on my list gave me a bit of momentum to move on to the next item.

Life is often like that. Sometimes we have these periods when we get absolutely nothing done. The longer we are in that state, less and less gets done and we begin to feel a bit anxious. Life is all about continually taking stock of our situation, making decisions and doing something about those decisions. And when we do act on our decisions, we start to feel good about ourselves again. We begin to feel more alive… happier with ourselves.

Other things have been going on in my life. I have had some rather weighty matters on my mind, of late. And there have been too many days when I was entirely too distracted to take care of the things I needed to do “today.”

Here’s the thing. If we do not take care of the things we need to do today, we cannot move on with our lives. We get stuck in place and time. We can become a little lost in our own lives and it can become a real struggle to get moving again. Life is just too short to squander even a moment of our lives, especially through procrastination or indecision.

We are all faced with this challenge, each and every day. We always have to remember that we are only as good as we are today. Also, we have to remember that the only things that we absolutely have to take care of are the things that need to be done today. It never ends until the day we die.

I have come to believe that in the game of life, this is pretty much what it comes down to. Not rocket science, by any means. But at least for me, this is the most straight-forward game plan I can see that works. And, you know, at the end of the day, if you have taken care of the most important items on your “to do” list, as well as you can, you feel pretty damn good.

It is late. The toolboxes are organized and stowed away now. That may not seem like much of an accomplishment, to you. But knowing this makes me feel good. My life is the sum of all the small battles I will have to fight along the way. Today I just won one of those small battles.