Archive for the ‘causes of procrastination’ tag
“You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas.”
That sentence, spoken by Michael Brown
and accompanied by a gift of one year’s expenses,
sparked the creation Harper Lee’s greatest work -
To Kill a Mockingbird. I bring it up today because
she was born 82 years ago on this very day.
I also bring it up because it brings up
some interesting points about doing the One Big Thing -
the work that focuses your gifts, talents and callings.
The first is more of a question -
“even if I got a year’s worth of expenses covered,
would I be able to get the work done?”
I know I’d have problems doing it - it’s not the
shangri-la that it seems to be when viewed
from the vantage point of working a job
just to keep a roof over your head.
It would be a year of no excuses,
where the life work you wanted becomes work.
The job becomes a convenient excuse for
not doing your true work.
Maybe having a job that isn’t your true work,
but is more amenable to your true work is better option.
83 years ago today, T.S. Eliot took a position
at Faber & Faber, leaving his dreary
former position at Lloyd’s Bank.
The problem there is that even sort of true work
still becomes work, and thus a new source
of rationalization and procrastination.
If I had the perfect summarization to offer
on this subject, I would be offering it now.
I would also be a bit more renowned than I
am right now, which is to say that I would be renowned.
So I’m now back where I was before this,
but for these two hundred some-odd words.
Does anyone else have any ideas?
Tags: causes of procrastination, faber, harper lee, job escape from work, lloyd, merry christmas, michael brown, procrastination, rationalization, rationalization and procrastination, t s eliot, talents, to kill a mockingbird, true work15 seconds of fail: Hecklers and Resistance
He interrupted second service last week.
Our pastor, the ushers and security handled it like pros.
He left reluctantly, making a show of wiping the dust
from his shoes, giving the thumbs up sign
and grinning like a Cheshire cat.
As much as I’d like to rag on the guy, I can’t.
To be honest, the same force that pulled him
away from his true work and towards heckling
is the selfsame force that can thrash me soundly on any given day
if I even think of slacking off -
inner resistance.
I’m not talking about external resistance,
that stuff that happens to us from outside us
(like having a heckler interrupt your sermon).
No - I’m talking about the resistance inside,
the pressure to take any action except for the one you
know you should be taking.
For the heckler it was trading whatever
genius, gift and calling God had (and still has) for him
for a moment of cheap junk food shock -
his 15 seconds of fail.
If I think I’m any better, then I’m next in line.
You see, doing church can leave you blind to the ways that
inner resistance can screw you up, over, and out of
the life you’re meant to live.
Procrastination lies behind much of this -
not the outright denial of the work which needs to be done,
but its delay by any and all means possible.
Let me put it this way -
If inner resistance was called a headache, there would be:
- headache seminars
- headache ministries
- a bestselling book on the theology of headaches
- at least one Headache Sufferer’s Bible (in large print, of course)
instead of the simple advice to heed the still small voice saying:
“Medicine cabinet.
2nd shelf.
White bottle, red label.
Take two.”
Over-externalization is the problem here -
it’s so easy to want to make external acts,
especially those of uncommon grace
(healings, deliverances, and miracles in general)
the expected norm even when the internal prompts
of common grace beckon towards the medicine cabinet.
So it is with inner resistance -
it’s easier to cast the devil as the author of all our failings and foibles
than it is to own our own complicity in much of our present state in life.
Let’s get back to the heckler -
perhaps he has ministerial aspirations,
perhaps his gifts, his genius,
and even his calling all confirm this.
Instead of doing the work needed to be true
to his calling, genius and gifting,
he does what so many of us do
[and I'm convicting myself even as I write this] -
take what seems to be a shortcut to glory,
only to be shortchanged and shamed in the end.