Small Disciplines
Creating the world we want to have
Journal: 18 November, 2024, morning.
When I get up from my reading chair in the mornings, if I’ve used the quilted throw for some extra warmth, I fold it and put it in the basket by my Mom’s pie safe. I straighten pictures or paintings if they’re hanging crooked. Each time I hand wash something in the kitchen sink, I scrub it and empty the strainer. I begin each morning with a meditative reading and coffee. I sort our clothing before doing the laundry. I always put the shopping carts in their proper return receptacle. I floss.
I do not respond in kind to cruelty. I think before I speak. I am honest in my dealings with others. I try always to remember people’s humanity. I resist anger and hatred. I always try to encourage. I “allow people their joy.”
All these things? I think of them as “small disciplines”. None of them are profound, but collectively and over time, their impact is.
You could call these things disciplines, yes, and I do, here, but they’re more than that. They’re intentional choices I’ve made about how I want to live in the world, and they call into being the kind of world I want to live in, at least in my three feet of influence. They are in essence acts of creation. In what I choose to intentionally and consistently do, I create my world.
I want to live in peace, so I choose to be a person of peace.
Cruelty scars the soul, so I choose never to be cruel.
Joy is a force multiplier of goodness, so I always allow others their joy.
Our hearts are tender things, so I choose encouragement over criticism.
Small disciplines. Hundreds of small, singular choices and decision points, in the course of a day, in all the days in a lifetime. In time, small disciplines turn into personal rules and they become our SOPs, our standard operating procedures. We no longer have to think about doing them, they just hum along in the background of our day, effortlessly generating our actions and responses to life happening. They become our default settings, these small disciplines.
It’s good to think about this, the world we are creating through the small daily choices we make. It’s good to regularly ask ourselves if it’s the world we actually want. We cannot regularly act one way and expect a world completely different than the way we act.
Our choices matter.
#journalingalife