Your alarm goes off in the morning, and you roll over and hit snooze. It goes off again, and after debating if it's really worth going in to work, you grumble and stumble to your feet. Shower, teeth, hair, deodorant, shirt, pants, socks, shoes. Your wallet, watch, keys, and anything else gets shoved into pockets before you grab your favorite coffee mug and pour a cup. Lunchbox, briefcase, toolbox, portfolio, you balance everything in your arms and head to work.
The car, the bus, the train, the bike, or your feet carry you to work, to school, sometimes with a pit stop at daycare on the way. Eventually the coffee kicks in and you suddenly realize where you are. You just can't clearly remember the earlier part of that morning, because it blends in with every other morning before it.
You were running on default. We all do that. There are parts of our schedule that don't change from day to day, and they are so ingrained in us that we could almost do them blindfolded. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as it's a routine that keeps you on task.
The problem comes when you live your entire life that way.
"My name is Aaron, and I am a Sad Dad."
"Hi, Aaron," comes the chorus of replies.
"Can I get a show of hands from anyone who just loves mosquitoes?"
A few people chuckle in response, but not one hand goes into the air.
"Oh, come on! Are you telling me that the idea of being bitten a thousand times in thirty seconds by tiny little bloodsuckers doesn't sound like the greatest Sunday afternoon ever? Make a couple burgers, slap a few mosquitoes, grab a drink, slap a few more mosquitoes, play a little cornhole, slap a few more mosquitoes. Spend the next week fighting the urge to scratch every exposed inch of your skin, telling yourself it was worth it.
"Speaking of, anyone up for a cookout this weekend?"
More laughs this time, and I smile in response.
"I have an inflatable pool in my back yard for my kids. It's small, and since it doesn't have a filter, it gets dirty very quickly. I even have a cover to put over the top; but if I'm not careful, it will quickly fill up with leaves and dirt and bugs within a day or two. Add in a thunderstorm or two, and you've got yourself a really disgusting soup.
"It's a pain to have to constantly clean it out, especially when the kids go days without using it, so I freely acknowledge that I'll let it sit in all it's brown, disgusting glory. It doesn't take long before I really regret that decision, and do you know why? Mosquitos. They love standing, stagnant water, and that's where they lay their eggs. If I don't clean out that pool frequently, the mosquito population around my house goes from family reunion to block party to a back-from-the-dead standing room only Beatles reunion concert. It's not a fun time.
"We tend to do the same thing with our lives, and without constant maintenance and upkeep, just like the water in the pool we become stagnant. We even start breeding mosquitoes, of a sort. We poke at the people around us and suck them dry in some sort of attempt to keep ourselves going, and as we already established, no one wants to spend a lot of time around mosquitoes."
I see a few somber nods and lowering of heads.
"So why don't we talk about how we get that pool cleaned back out, and just what steps we need to take to keep it clean and mosquito free?"
My mother put it to me best, in an email she sent me this morning that inspired this week's blog post:
"Sometimes, oftentimes, we just run on default. The path of least resistance. When water runs across the ground, it creates a groove and any additional water continues to follow that path. Running on default is easiest. It takes no effort, no brain power.
But...it doesn't get us where we want to go. It leads us into a rut, like water pooling, which then becomes stagnant - and stinky.
The thing is that we can, with intention, create our new default - we can make a new groove - we can replace our path of least resistance with a new path, and after a while, that new (healthy) path is the one we go in."
So this is where I am: stagnant, stinky, and breeding mosquitos. I'm starting to clean things out though, and hopefully I'll soon be able to break through the standing water and carve out a new path towards a cleaner, clearer me.
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