We live in a world of aphorisms. Those concise pithy statements that hold some element of truth, such as “a little learning is a dangerous thing” or “a fool and his money are soon parted.”
These past few weeks we have been interviewing potential students for a selective high school program. The program is for high school seniors who want to get a jump start on college and so will spend their senior year on the community college campus rather than their high school campus. Often during the interview students will talk about how they want to be in the program to make a new start––to be better students––and they believe the college environment will help them.
This answer always makes me think of the aphorism––”Easier said than done.” These students believe that the change of venue will magically make studying easy and enjoyable. What they often discover when the school year begins is that when tomorrow comes, it feels surprisingly a lot like today.
I think we have all experienced this reality in one way or another. Tomorrow sounds like a great day to start that diet, and we are all jazzed, until tomorrow comes and we are hungry––very hungry, and now it doesn’t seem like such a good idea. Tomorrow seems like a great time to build up the prayer life or spend more time in the Word, but then tomorrow comes, and there are as many demands or interruptions or pleasant diversions as there were today. Even in my beloved world of golf, tomorrow is a great day to put the nerves at bay and start making those nerve wracking three foot putts for par, but when I am standing over them, they seem just as far as they did the day before.
The problem, as it is most of the time, lies between our ears. We are very good at thinking and rethinking and over-thinking the issue, but not very good at getting started. Nike picked a great slogan when they came up with “Just Do It!” They knew if people just started the behavior, they were at least more likely to continue it or come back to it. It wasn’t the ambiguous great idea any more; instead, it was an action.
It is very true that it is easier to talk about something than to do it, but it is such a feeling of accomplishment when we "Just Do It." Next week’s blog will take a look at the area I think for me, and maybe for you, is much “easier said than done.”
These past few weeks we have been interviewing potential students for a selective high school program. The program is for high school seniors who want to get a jump start on college and so will spend their senior year on the community college campus rather than their high school campus. Often during the interview students will talk about how they want to be in the program to make a new start––to be better students––and they believe the college environment will help them.
This answer always makes me think of the aphorism––”Easier said than done.” These students believe that the change of venue will magically make studying easy and enjoyable. What they often discover when the school year begins is that when tomorrow comes, it feels surprisingly a lot like today.
I think we have all experienced this reality in one way or another. Tomorrow sounds like a great day to start that diet, and we are all jazzed, until tomorrow comes and we are hungry––very hungry, and now it doesn’t seem like such a good idea. Tomorrow seems like a great time to build up the prayer life or spend more time in the Word, but then tomorrow comes, and there are as many demands or interruptions or pleasant diversions as there were today. Even in my beloved world of golf, tomorrow is a great day to put the nerves at bay and start making those nerve wracking three foot putts for par, but when I am standing over them, they seem just as far as they did the day before.
The problem, as it is most of the time, lies between our ears. We are very good at thinking and rethinking and over-thinking the issue, but not very good at getting started. Nike picked a great slogan when they came up with “Just Do It!” They knew if people just started the behavior, they were at least more likely to continue it or come back to it. It wasn’t the ambiguous great idea any more; instead, it was an action.
It is very true that it is easier to talk about something than to do it, but it is such a feeling of accomplishment when we "Just Do It." Next week’s blog will take a look at the area I think for me, and maybe for you, is much “easier said than done.”
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