let goodness run rampant

Where his brother was 

(Even as his blood spilled and cried out) 

Cain replied, 

“Am I my brother’s keeper?”

Christ, hanging from the cross,

As His blood spilled 

Saving us, ushering us 

To God’s divine embrace 

Saying, in reply,

(Am I my brother’s keeper?)

This is the first generation of now adults that have been raised with a default state of rest. The concept of working and doing what needs to be done from sunrise to sunset is foreign, so something as demanding and difficult as motherhood seems overwhelmingly impossible.

If you view life as your default being watching TV and checking off a few things from a list during the day, you surely aren’t going to adapt well to that which forces you to actively live. It’s a complete lifestyle switch — to a life where you must do everything intentionally, even rest. Which is by far a better way of living, but it has been robbed from these younger generations.

And adding to the problem is lack of community. Folks are herded through life like cattle with little interaction with those outside their own age. They don’t have an older, wiser guide to follow through life, neither do they know how to make sense of the little ones. Enter all the atrocious baby and parenting books that do no good but cause stress and confusion for these young parents, but they eat them up because they have no other point of direction through parenthood. They’ve never really cared for the little ones outside of a four hour Saturday night babysitting gig a couple times in high school. They’ve never had to manage a household. They can hardly manage themselves.

And while this post is about a concerning trend of parents not being able to raise their own kids, it’s really just one symptom of the larger problem that I’ve already pointed out: we no longer actively live as much as we passively exist.

There are more and more people who are amazed at the concept of Actively Doing all day.

And I speak with such authority here because it’s a mindset shift I’ve lived through. I can get done in one morning what used to take me a week. And I have hobbies. And I have been learning new skills. And I have more responsibilities. And I have had no trouble taking these things in stride as life has marched on since having this mindset shift.

There’s not much else I can give in the way of practical advice as most of it really is mental and not tangible, but there are a couple key things I’ve noticed have helped me.

For starters, I’m more likely to stay true to what I need to do and be motivated if I’m beholden to someone or something else that’s outside of myself. I’ll clean the house and clean it quick if I know I’ll have company, but if it’s just me day in and day out, it’s likely the house will never truly be clean and I’ll be on an endless cycle of doing one thing here or there and never feeling free from knowing I need to clean. Or take my horse for example. I’m much more likely to stay consistent with training and do it without complaint if I’ve committed to taking my horse to my friends house for roping, vs if I have to force myself to do it alone in my yard. And with that horse comes many other responsibilities. I didn’t want to go out in the cold and give him a shot last night, but I did cuz I knew I simply had to. No one else was gonna do it, I signed up for the responsibility, and I have zero right to complain (especially since it’s really not that hard and took almost no time) so responsibility to that which is outside of myself drives me to want to do what is right and do it well and do it quick.

The other thing is figuring out your vices and cutting them off at the root. Just like an alcoholic can’t even allow himself a sip of wine on a holiday, you might need to go strict cold turkey on whatever you use to satiate your boredom and keep yourself from growing as a human (cell phone, social media, tv, video games, whatever). You can decide what extent you need to take it, but you might have to set strict boundaries for yourself (like I don’t keep my phone by my bedside, and I also keep it plugged in when I’m at home so I can’t wander off to the couch with it for example)

So really I think the cure is just diving into responsibility head first, but — and this is extremely important — with the understanding that you have to be the one to make better choices and let this responsibility drive you forward. You can’t jump in with assumed safety nets or a willingness to drown. In that case, it’ll just make it worse.