What's My Motivation?
Last toke: 84 days
Last smoke: 77 days

With this week being devoted to an offsite training class, my morning drive schedule has shifted back about two hours. That means, along with extra sleep in the morning, I am listening to different radio preachers. Chuck Swindoll is on at 8 and Charles Stanley at 8:30.

Stanley was finishing up a 3-day series on self-discipline. Needless to say, I found it very depressing, given my current situation and the fact that I have very little self-discipline historically.

This morning, however, he said something that caught my attention. He made the point that if people don't have any motivation, self-discipline for it's own sake is nothing more than legalism.

"Bingo!", I thought, "I have no real motivation." And it's true. There is nothing in my life that really makes me want to get out of bed in the morning. When I thought back to the few times in my life that I was able to exercise any level of discipline, I had some compelling goal or reason motivating me behind the scenes.

When I was in college, I studied and got involved in theatre because I wanted to pave the way for a future that got me free from my parents' meaningless, bourgeois worldview. I suspect that part of my motivation was also to show my parents that I was smart, talented and finally worthy of their acceptance and affirmation.

That worked out well.

When I split from my second wife, V., I was highly motivated to succeed in my newly found career in IT -- partly to get the income I would need to have a decent life while still supporting my children and partly to show her that I could be successful, motivated, prosperous and worthy of her acceptance and affirmation.

Once I got to a certain point in my career where I had shown all of those things and more, I got bored. And she barely noticed anyway.

A few years back, I got a bit motivated to lose weight and work out because I felt that would enhance my enjoyment of the swinging life. But that also depended on finding someone who shared that same motivation. And it also got old and tired.

Most recently, I was pretty motivated to get back into 'spiritual shape', but my motivation has been tough to maintain. At first, I felt that there might be a way for me to get connected, and it seemed to be working for a while. However, as my troubles in my marriage have mounted, and the same old failures keep besetting me, I find myself withdrawing in the face of well-meaning, but typically unsatisfying attempts to encourage me by my brothers and sisters in the church I attend.

Chuck Swindoll told a great story yesterday that I totally identified with. I've long suspected that either I am highly deficient with respect to my experience of the Christian life, or that most of the people I encounter in the Church either simply don't get it or are bald-faced liars and posers.

Anyway, Swindoll talked about a hiking outing that members of his church organized. After all the usual signing up, planning, organizing and scheduling, the group went on a hike up to a beautiful vista somewhere in Southern California. It soon became clear, however, that some people were less suited to this level of exertion than others. One woman, in particular, lagged far behind. Others, more fit and 'motivated', called to her from the summit -- regaling her with their impressions of the stupendous view from the top and telling her that she 'could do it'. Swindoll's point here being that it's probably not worth it to sprint ahead of our 'weaker' brothers, and definitely not helpful to offer that kind of disconnected 'encouragement'.

This is how I feel every time someone at church tells me that I just need to 'do it' or that they haven't 'given up' on me. People don't really want to come down where I am and get a clue on what it feels like, and I'm not particularly eager to burden them. I've been there, and the only thing that seems to happen is that whoever is stupid enough to try and walk with me ends up finally giving up on me.

So what is my motivation?

God loves me? My kids need me? Both true, but unfortunately not sufficiently penetrating, especially considering that my kids could do a lot better than me for a father.

I'm supposed to have a purpose, and that's supposed to drive me to deny myself, get up in the morning, forego my right to react to the numerous character flaws, overt sins, injustices and inconveniences that exist in my life like weeds on steroids.

Someone recently told me that setting goals based on avoiding negative consequences is a pretty piss poor way to live life. I'm inclined to agree. At the same time, about the only thing that I can do is just maintain and try to avoid having things get worse than they already are while I try and find something that can truly motivate me for the long haul.
- posted by The Drake @ 9:22 AM