Making An Effort

When it’s easier not to

Journal: 21 July, 2025, morning.

Breakfast quesadillas with fresh salsa and one luscious pepper, from the Yannarella pop up kitchen. Growing up, we always ate breakfast, usually a sturdy breakfast, a good start to the day, fuel for the body’s daily work. A special treat was reconstituted grape juice from that frozen can. I loved it.

I was thinking this morning about making an effort, the desire and self discipline to do that when not doing it is so much easier and less work.

For example, making the effort to research voting issues and candidates, far past the surface ads and sound bites, to exercise that franchise in a civically responsible way, or making the effort to teach your children to cook and feed themselves well, or making the effort to be neat and clean and groomed when going out in public, or making the effort to be a lifelong learner, to avail yourself of the endless riches out there for the taking, or making the effort to create beauty, past functionality and utility, to take and give pleasure in that, or making the effort to raise the level of our public discourse: richer, deeper, more meaningful.

Making an effort. Being kind in difficult situations. Giving your time and energy when you’d much rather not. Always showing up for life and people. Doing the right thing when no one would know if you didn’t. Painting all the wood, not just the part that shows (yes, that’s an analogy). Standing up for what’s right, not what’s popular, or trendy. If a person of faith, living that in what you actually do.

It’s hard work.

There are so many personal anecdotes I could talk about here, and people who come to mind when I think about this, but I will just say that for me, the people who make an effort to be cheerful, optimistic (though they have read the news), passionate about this life, engaged and involved, just showing up every day expecting good things to happen, finding and giving joy because they love life and living, well, those are the people who light up my days. I’m so grateful they make the effort to be that way.

Thank you, Mom, for making the effort all those years. All those many breakfasts, and so much more.

Thank you, my friends I speak of here, for making the effort to be the good humans you are, for being the light in my days. ❤️

#journalingalife