My real exercise today was an exercise in pushing aside the "not feeling like it" and running anyway.
It is the constant contest between what you want (feel) now, and what you want most.
Today is the day where many us start to stray from the path of our New Year’s Resolution, a goal we set just 18 days ago. I hope today is the day many of us determined spirits choose to keep on going towards the resolutions to the challenges we face.
“Let our New Year’s resolution be this: We will be there for one another as fellow members of humanity, in the finest sense of the word.” - Göran Persson
May we focus this Thanksgiving on being grateful and glad for one another.
May we recommit ourselves to being restorers and repairers of a more beloved community.
And may we raise our communal ambitions from tolerance to love.
This quote has been attributed to everyone from Napoleon Bonaparte to Theodore Roosevelt.
Nonetheless, it speaks to me.
Despite the voices within and without telling you today to stop, give up, or surrender, I wish you the resolve to, endure, persevere, or just carry on.
I have problems with how some conceptions of sin have been used to stir hypocritical judgment; harmful shame and self-loathing or worse.
I like what Lincoln says:
"It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues."
Amidst all the doubters, negativity and crass critics, may we be forces of encouragement, support and a reason folks believe there is kindness and decency in the world.
When I was young, I learned the Bible verse: "Faith without works is dead." It always spoke to me and motivated me and obviously inspired this post.
Nothing worthwhile is easy. May we rise to the challenges we face. I wish you the best.
What we say about others is more an indication of who we are than who they are.
So how do we react when someone insults us? We have no control over what people say or do to us and yet we do have control over how we respond and even (with practice) how we feel.
I believe in the power of teams.
Here is to rugged individualism and self-reliance. But rugged individualism didn't beat the Nazis or get us to the moon or map the human genome. We did those things because of our teams.