Under pressure

 

So I feel like I'm on a tight time schedule. Tomorrow I am heading to Tanzania. To attend and be a bridesmaid in a wedding. Usually I would at least have something half written by now so that over the next couple of days I could edit and then post my awesome blog sometime on Wednesday. However it seems this week when I do not have the time all the things I want to write about either need more time, more photos, or more information, none of which I can get today.

This leaves me with a serious dilemma.

I could not blog. That is option one. But I have set myself a personal goal of posting each week. I have even set myself a deadline and except for when the blogger site failed for a couple of days I have managed to keep to it.

So I will go with option two. Which is to write something and edit and post before tomorrow. Because otherwise I will get out of the habit of writing and I know for me, it is easy to pick up bad habits but much harder to stick with good ones.

Habits are interesting things though. For instance, for most of my life I have struggled to overcome the habit of biting my fingernails. My mum used every means possible to get me out of the habit from bribery to punishment to painting my nails with extremely poisonous tasting liquid. All to no avail. The habit remained with me into adulthood. The thing about habits are that they are almost semi-conscious. I would always try to overcome it with will power but it seemed that my will power was no match for my semi-conscious brain. I would find myself with a nail half missing and think to myself 'oh well, if one half is gone I might as well bite off the other half too'.

The funny thing is that since I have been here in Uganda I have not bitten my fingernails. And, if I do say so myself, they are looking quite good. Considering that I have had bad nails for more than 20 years of my life I feel like this is a bit of an achievement.

Life can also be a habit. We can go through our days in a semi-conscious state, never making decisions about our life but falling into whatever circumstances come our way. We can give away our choices and say to ourselves 'oh well, that's happened I might as well keep going' even if we end up far from where we wanted to be.

We can also wake up each morning and do what we did yesterday and what we are going to tomorrow without thinking about how our life can be an influence on the world around us. Did you know that you can make the world a better place with your words and actions? Even here where most people would assume I am helping others and doing good things it is easy to just go through the motions, just do what needs to be done instead of really thinking about what I'm doing and who it is I am doing it for. I might be doing good things but if I do them without thinking about who I am doing them for, then I might as well be serving in a checkout. I'm not saying that if your job is routine that that is bad. I'm saying if you don't think about your day and your life and the people in it then it's possible to wake up in twenty years and think you've missed something.

This is written in a hurry and possibly is more thinking aloud than coherent thought. But HOPE it helps you to think about your life and the way you are able to make a difference to someone. It's too easy to say that you are not able to make a difference but if everyone started believing that they can and started living intentionally we could all make our little bit of the world a better place.

What are you going to do today that will make a positive difference in someone else's life?

By the way, thanks to all who have checked out the Australia HOPE International website through my links. It makes me feel like I have used technology for good and that the effort is not wasted!

Have a blessed week

bron