It’s not regimen or self-discipline I’ll need if I want to write songs, silly. I have that. It’s company. In the sea of commitments I swim in, it’s commitments alone that cause efforts to float. It’s time to start a songwriting group.

The Bible says nothing about the importance of setting or achieving goals per se. If you set no goals, yet you love—that is, if you act as though God and those around you are important and their good matters to you—you’re doing alright. If you achieve no goals, yet you love, you’re doing alright.

friend:

That’s it! I think that for me, although I know in my head that this is what I should want, I actually really want other things. If I truly only wanted to love Him and others, to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly, to rejoice, pray, give thanks and make peace, then I would have opportunity to do what I want, every moment of every day. But I find in myself anger at setbacks, annoyance at disruptions, fear of failure to accomplish something, longing to be understood and liked, and desire to “feel good” through a panoply of means which I have discovered over years of living. So my prayer lately has been: “God, I am powerless even to want what I know I should want!”

me:

I hear you! “I am powerless even to want what I know I should want.” True.

Some disjointed follow-up thoughts:

1. For my part, l am so motivated by a desire to steer clear of feeling bad (angry, disgruntled, disappointed, frustrated, resentful, petulant, argumentative) that I’m thrilled to have found a Desire that is always fulfillable.
2. That this Desire is so prosocial and thus means that I can apply my dopaminergic drive toward the production of the more durably happyifying serotonin is a major bonus.
3. I think ridding ourselves of our secondary desires is neither advisable nor possible. John doesn’t write that we should shed the yearnings of the flesh and the yearnings of the eyes and the pride of our estate—he writes that we shouldn’t love those yearnings and pride. The trick is to subject those desires for other things—even if those things are plainly altruistic—to the absolute lordship of Jesus the Messiah and His Father, who usually do not require specific action but rather only the fulfillment of The Royal Law.

friend:

Hence discerning the “will of God” is kind of a fool’s errand since we know His will and we have secondary desires. Where I used to work, we used to say “love God and do what you want.” I always hated this because the some people took that as, “Sweet! I love God—and I’m going surfing. Screw those hard missions.” Yet I think your point remains.

In any event, we could also say “If you acquire and achieve all the most kingdom-focused secondary desires you could think of, but you don’t love, you lost the plot!”

me:

I think there are two kinds of people in the world: those who need to ask “What do I want?” and those who need to ask “What’s the right thing to do?”

As for “love God and go surfing,” I talked with another friend about that this morning. We agreed that there there’s nothing wrong with going surfing, and that if you surf in joyful thanksgiving to the Lord, it is worship. However, we also agreed that if all you do is eat, drink, and surf, showing no concern for the things that concern God, it can hardly be said that you love God. That’s the corrective.

What should I want? I should want the kingdom of God.

What is the kingdom of God? It is where His will is done.

What, then, is His will for me? That I love Him and love those around me, that I act justly, be kind, and be humble, that I rejoice, pray, give thanks, that I make peace. In other words: nothing context-specific.

Thus, all my context-specific desires, unless they bear the imprimatur of the Holy Spirit (e.g, “tend my sheep,” “strike the rock,” “buy your uncle’s field,” “stop, leave the road, and go left,” “separate the peanut”), are secondary. They are desires for other things that will choke the word of God if I let them. Even if they themselves have the potential for good.

I have many such desires. This world is overstuffed with opportunities to do and enjoy good. But it doesn’t often matter which I choose to fulfill, or even that I fulfill any of them at all. What’s important is that I fulfill the Prime Desire to do the will of God—even, I should emphasize, when that Desire runs counter to my secondary desires.

This frees me to accept interference, interruptions, and redirects (most of which come in the form of other people’s secondary desires), or to at least field them gracefully, without grumbling or arguing.

The Prime Desire is always fulfillable.

Over the summer, my primary prayer for myself was that everything I do, say, and think be done, said, and thought in total love for You and love for those around me like they’re myself. A week or two ago, that prayer became more specific: that all my talking be full of grace (gift), as though seasoned with salt. And today, You’ve narrowed the focus even more: Let me do everything without grumbling or arguing. In the thick of this stressful period of home improvement that has often heavily dampened my mood and occasionally strained my relationship with Carla by its insistence that I keep working and my frequent ignoring of that insistence because of my antipathy for this kind of work—I couldn’t think of a more perfect directive. Thanks.

If one is going to spend one’s free time working, it should be work one enjoys or work that directly benefits others—ideally both. Do-it-yourself home improvement is neither of those (for me).

When I’m old, I won’t regret not traveling more, like so many listicles indicate many people do. I’ve already traveled more than most humans do—certainly more than almost all humans of the past. No, I’m most likely to experience regret about insufficiently fulfilling my two most basic moral desires, desires I’ve found to be at odds in me for thirty years: to prioritize deep connections with those around me and to accomplish accomplishments, mostly for the sake of others, some for the sake of self-expression, sometimes both, that require sustained application of my whole self.

Given how continually at odds these two desires are in my life, there’s only one possible way for me to avoid end-of-life regret: Favor working toward accomplishments that can only be accomplished in close collaboration with those around me.

Worrying about better sleep has made me a worse sleeper.

I am deeply, intrinsically inclined to be subject to nothing and to no one. I wish to be in my own driver’s seat as much as possible. Yet, as Burkemann writes, there is a direct relationship between individual sovereignty and loneliness. I do not wish to be subject to loneliness. Moreover, I am, by dint of my creaturehood, unavoidably subject to the Lord of all. That’s true whether I’m acting so or not. Hence, trying to live my life by exercising unalloyed individual sovereignty is both maladaptive and false. What’s more, the Lord of all actually explicitly commands me to subject myself to others and even says that unless I die, I will be alone.

Yet a clear pattern has emerged in my own life: I do not initiate much social activity and decline much of it that is offered to me. I do this largely because I have used my considerable, insistent autonomy as a waymaker for productivity, energy preservation, and, to some degree, spatial and other kinds of order in our household. As a result and as predicted by Burkemann and Jesus alike, I feel more and more alone.

So what’s the trick? Bend my powerful autonomy to intentionally subject myself to others. Here I don’t mean volunteer to serve people, like when they’re moving or something. I have no problem doing that. I mean three things that I’m not already doing consistently:

1. When someone proposes a social activity, join in!
2. Initiate my own social activity, too!
3. And when I’m among others, be intentional. Engage. Be fully there. Bring my whole, powerful self—my “loving others really well,” my “tremendous interpersonal skills” and potential for being “one of the best communicators out there”—to the table.

My independence and power themselves are assets to others—but only if I exercise them for the sake of and in subjection to others.

In any given day, myriad people and circumstances will be both out of my control and impinging on my own autonomy. What will I choose?

“The Choice” by William Butler Yeats

The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story’s finished, what’s the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day’s vanity, the night’s remorse.

(h/t Graeme Wood)

If I didn’t time myself at work, I’d be apt to spend less than forty hours a week working for DiamondBack, not more. And that’s no sleight to DiamondBack, who are doing good things; instead, it’s an indication that I’m interested in everything and am easily distracted.

“It’s weird that we’d rather sit through another podcast episode about the loneliness epidemic than just call somebody unscheduled” (Aaron).

Screen addiction, which I define much more broadly than the APA might, is harmful for the same reason suicide is harmful (and thus called by many religious people a sin): It removes people, with all the skills, humor, and other virtues they might bring to bear on the world, from the social nexus and destroys human attachments. It is a hermitage.

I am the In-Betweener:
I’m never satisfied.
Is that I’m keener,
Or am I just a bag of pride? ✏️ 🎤 🎵

A potential revolution for memorizing lyrics: Write them down. Why haven’t I been doing this all along!?

Roughly my sophomore year in college, I started using Georgia for school papers instead of Time New Roman. Why? Because it’s bigger at the same point size, hence easier to get to “four pages, double-spaced, size 12 font.” (Not to mention it’s easier on the eyes.)

To insist it is my civic duty to read about, think about, and talk about tyrants only augments their tyranny. Ignoring tyrants is my preferred mode of protest. NB: This is not the same as saying I will ignore the effects their tyranny has on my neighbors.

Part of 1 Corinthians 16 is as a good a motto as one can find: “Do everything in love.” Since so much of my life comprises words, and since the biblical proverbialists, Jesus, and James all emphasize the power and importance of our words, I’m going to provisionally subset the motto to concentrate its effect: “Say everything in love.”

The word of the year this year is “get to”: Everything I do, I get to do. (Hat tip: Ethan.)

Inspired by part of this interview with Lisa Silvestri, the author of Peace by Peace: Risking Public Action, Creating Social Change, which I may read soonish with my friend Neill—after I finish:

• Forgiveness: An Alternative Account, which Ruth and I both got excited about roughly simultaneously and thus co-purchased (co-purchasing books—what a fun idea! an interpersonal nano-library…),
• parts of Stricken by God?, another of Neill’s recommendations after he read my essay about the Cross, and
• Watchmen, recommended to me by both my son and my wife—

here is a list of what bothers me:

• barriers to walkability,
• the predominance of solo, receptive, junky entertainment,
• words whose poor definitional boundaries cause moral problems,
• faulty exegesis,
• parroting, and
• roadkill.

I cannot reliably control my circumstances. I cannot at all control other people. But I can control my (current) self. Herein lies happiness.

A truism, perhaps. But one worth repeating, especially to someone like myself who scores, mostly to his chagrin, as an 8 on the Enneagram.

Proverbs so often puts the locus of wisdom on what we say.

Kitchen towels are much more effective at soaking up water if, instead of constantly moving them around, you let them rest. My attention is a kitchen towel.

I don’t feel at work the stress I feel at home, where stress accompanies not only the drive to get things done, but even the desire for recreation!

Why the difference? I’m not certain. But my surmises are several:

• For one, I’m explicitly working for other people. That relieves me of the kind of internal pressure I feel when I’m working on my own stuff.
• It also helps that those other people for whom I’m working are trustworthy and trust me. That means I basically have liberty to do as I please.
• I have liberty to do as I please as long as I color within the lines a distinct mission: To maximize the security, resilience, utility, and accessibility of DiamondBack’s information. That unity of purpose helps.
• Finally, five days a week I enjoy eight-hour expanses of time in which do the work.
• Oh, and I’ve largely managed to avoid working under deadlines.

Might I import those circumstances into my non-DiamondBack life? Yes. And in :

• I can view myself as explicitly working for God.
• God is trustworthy and trusts me to do as I please.
• The unity of purpose is easy to identify: The great commandments.
• As for time: Why so serious? What’s the rush? All of life is a gift.

From that last point, maybe the shorthand of it all is to feel that I get to do all the things: Whether I’ve actively decided to do something or that something is decided for me, it is all gratuity. Even adversity stimulates thought and the growth of wisdom and resilience. That’s how I feel at work. (How fortunate is that?) May I bring that feeling to bear in the rest of my life.

I tend to hold in tension my intentions with your own ✏️ 🎤 🎵