Motivation

I’m sitting here listening to music and, until a moment ago, playing solitaire.  Meanwhile, I have a messy house, 20 lbs of cherries needing canning, barbershop music to practice, and half a dozen other things I need to be doing.  I think that one of the things I struggle with is finding motivation to get things done that I need to get done.  Part of me wants to have some big, dramatic purpose for moving forward.  Like, it’s easy to die for something important.  But living for something important?  Or something seemingly not-so-important?  That’s much more difficult.  Life rarely has some big, dramatic purpose.  It’s made up of little things that add up to make us what we are, give us integrity and character.  Like, in a journey. each little step doesn’t seem important, but without the little steps we wouldn’t make it to our destination.  Every great person out there became great through the little things — all the great moms become great by doing the little things like cleaning and raising children every day.  All the great authors become so by writing over and over, word after word.  Even though many of those words are crap and never see print, they all add up and are the background structure for the greatness.  Great marriages are built up of thousands of acts of kindness and words of encouragement.  But I struggle with seeing the forest for the trees.  As one of my favorite songs says, “I want to change the world/instead I sleep”.  So keep breathing.  Keep moving.  Keep making, and growing, and cleaning, and canning, and all the other little things that make us up into what makes us great and wonderful.  You’ll get there.  Putting one foot in front of the other.