A person can wait for quite some time
If he is waiting for his emotions
To approve of some new improvement
In his life habits—
If he is waiting for them to cheer him on,
Grinning ear to ear with amazement at him,
Applauding his decision to change,
And gushing over him with hugs and kisses.
He may think himself entitled to
Their immediate support,
And even resent the lack of it,
For surely, they owe it to him
To come to his aid in his moment of need
In celebration of his valiant decision to change—
Do they not?
And he pouts at their sluggishness
To get on board,
And decides that he will wait until
They come along and make him feel better,
And then he’ll get on with doing
What the new habit requires of him.
And he doesn’t understand that
His emotions have been well-trained—
By him, no less—
To like the old habit
And to resist any change,
And that they must be dragged,
Kicking and screaming, even,
If he is to make any progress
In the new habit,
Until finally they are trained anew—
For however gruellingly long that may take.
And suddenly, the deliberacy of
The well-disciplined life
Looms large in his mind, with regrets
That it must be this hard to manage,
And that he is, at his core,
So weak as to falter
So much with it.
And surely, it should be
Easier than this!
Right?
And there he sits
In this current moment of decision—
This one of a million necessary moments—
In which he will have to will himself into action—
Or not—
Based solely on what he knows in his mind
Is the right thing to do—
Even as his internal cheerleaders
Are yet sulking behind the bleachers.
This is the moment—
This one of a million such moments—
In which he invests, one way or the other,
In his aggregate disposition
In regard to the question of whether
Life should be lived according to
What one knows is best,
Or to what simply feels best.
And he doesn’t realize yet
That this is actually one of life’s
Most important decisions—
Habitually made poorly by the dull masses—
Himself included—
Every
Single
Day
In this way,
Even if not in that.
