A SILLY QUIRK

a silly quirk“Take your shoes off  –  stay awhile!” I jested.

“I want to finish my homework first,” our oldest responded to me years ago when she was still in high school.

I’m sure she didn’t get the attitude completely from me, but I most definitely understood where she was coming from. It’s a mindset. Whether she consciously knew it or not, she witnessed me work in my office with my shoes on, sometimes well past the time she’d go to bed.

Everyone uses different quirks to keep them motivated or on task. “Success in life regardless of how one defines it, is all about attitude.” 

I spent decades writing down goals and plans, intent on keeping my edge. There has been many occasion when the scorching Arizona sun reached it’s highest recorded temperature of the year and drove most folks for the shelter of shade and air conditioning, it drew me out to do battle like a gunslinger to main street in the old west.

I’d pull weeds and do yard work on the hottest day on the weekend summers, desperate to keep my flame burning within. Those type of twisted quirks have become habit, done now without a second thought. Required actions designed to succeed in perseverance, which is the foundation of success in my opinion.

My sweat soaked clothes caused the tremoring earthquake of a shiver shoot up my spine like an electrical current from within me as my body jerked and twisted involuntarily. I considered how long it would take for the sweatshirt that had done a valiant job catching  the perspiration at the gym, as well as the cotton tank top underneath it, to dry.

It was the dead of winter when I considered subconsciously the length of time to endure the drying process, another of those self-inflicted quirks designed at keeping myself with a razor’s edge.

I can’t begin to count how many times I’ve endured the discomfort of soggy clothes as one part of my regimen designed to keep me focused and tough. I’m weary of striving to be tough… Moreover, I’m tired of the battle in my mind and the fear of being soft.

Enduring is a mindset. I also think it’s good to be disciplined and I respect others with self-discipline, but like all the good gifts, traits, and characteristics provided by God Himself, we can find too much value within ourselves and believe that we have more to do with the outcome than we really do.

We tend to, “Wear yourselves out trying to get rich…” (Proverbs 23:4, partial) I think you can swap Solomon’s “rich” with
“success” which tends to point to the position of our hearts and the “wearing out” process fits. I’ve worn myself out along life’s merry way with a skewed focus; it’s easy to do in this flesh.

There’s still time to change and make a difference and it really does start in the heart and with the seemingly insignificant things in life… like changing out of freezing sweat soaked gym clothes. That really was a silly quirk.

Now on to next one… Kinda feels like the arcade game where you smash one plastic gopher head down and another pops up in a different hole…