Monday, January 01, 2007

The P Words

Potential is procrastinated potency. (That's today's attempt at profound alliteration)

Seriously... I've been thinking about my New Years resolutions and my Old Years diversionary tactics... how I managed to make a good start at a few things and then they just fizzled out. Or I fizzled out. (Some things needed to fizzle, I'm not talking about those.) I'm talking about the intangible commitments that were the underlying reasons for the tangible to-do's:

for example... I've had make doctor's appointment on my to do list for four months. It is (was) time for my check up. I feel fine. (most of the time) I take my four different medicines every day (most of the time) and I don't really expect bad news when I go see her. So why haven't I made that appointment? It has to be something other than laziness.

I spend much of my day unconscious. I like it that way. What's that about?

On so many occasions I have mourned the waste of potential... the potential of a good relationship, a better job, my own potential for deeper thought (or even scarier: deeper commitment to action.) Today's On a Journey meditation talked about personal potency being one of the things Jesus came to show us... to teach us. We are not as helpless as we like to think. For me it comes down to procrastination. For whatever reason... I procrastinate, I delay not only what needs to be done, but what I want to do. What's that about?

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Rats! I'm gonna miss those memes. But as long as you keep blogging, I'll survive.

Anonymous said...

I don't know about your procrastination, but mine is rooted in the fear of failure. Now I need to figure out why I'm so afraid to fail.......

Anonymous said...

I can think of three reasons for procrastinating. By the way, sometimes you scare me because we're so alike. Which means if we ever spent twenty minutes on a project together, we'd be at each other's throats with sharp instruments! Proscratination can come about (said Mr. Experience) from fear, from laziness, and from a lack of passion. Fear of the unkown causes me to slip into the shadows of avoidance. Laziness is just one of those things you're born with. Over generations my family has raised lack of urgency to an art form. Finally, and I think this applies to a lot of New Years Resolutions, a lack of passion. We may decide this is the year we read the great books we never read, but do we really care? If we don't it won't happen.
I think the passion one happens more than we think. We may be trying to do things that we think are good for us, but aren't who we are.

I could say more, but there's a football game on...

Claire Joy said...

Oh JT... (lol)
Lucky for me, football is not one of the things that will keep me from doing what needs to be done. In fact, football will get me on a completion roll faster than anything I can think of... except maybe baseball, or hockey, or golf, or basketball... See? We're really not alike at all.

Anonymous said...

Sister I was wondering if you knew of any other Anglican Religious who blog, apart from the sister's in your own community.
Thanks a lot, Luke

Claire Joy said...

Luke... in a nutshell, no. I googled Anglican Religious Blogs and found lots of clergy who blog, but no direct reference to religious who blog (not even me...) I did find a site where yiou can buy a nun costume for $9.99 though, so the time was not totally wasted...

Anonymous said...

Thanks.