Less than two weeks to Christmas and I am once again late to send stuff across the pond. I am also behind on getting our health expenses set up for taxes, fixing stuff around the house, losing weight, getting in better shape, and the million other things I could have made progress on during the lull of the pandemic. The busyness of the last two weeks did not really have much impact on all that.

For whatever reason I was thinking about my parents this morning and how in many ways they could have looked at me as a disappointment. Once an adult, I never really tried hard to get past the issues of their choices that impacted my life and build a solid relationship with my dad. I had a desire to, but not enough. I had the relationship with my mom, but I never got past that she wanted me to be valedictorian and always had the impression that I should provide for her in a manner she wanted when I was older. I wanted to help her, but not enough.

I am not saying that taking care of your parents financially is not a good goal, that being valedictorian is not a good goal, or that forgiving your parents is not a good goal. I am saying that I have a problem with others setting my goals. Part of why I work for myself now. I guess I really do not like others telling me what to do.

Beyond the spiritual aspects, I guess I have been more of a carrot person. Make it in my best interest and I will choose to do it, even if it is hard, takes a long time, or seems counterintuitive. My mom wanted me to get my eagle scout badge, so she incentivized me with the carrot of a car. My scholarships incentivized me to keep at least a 3.0 grade point average. My career prospects incentivized me to go to graduate school.

There was no incentive to get my eagle scout before the last possible day, so I put if off. There was no reason to get a 4.0, so I did not work that hard. There was no incentive to get a PhD, so I started working.

Lack of incentive or lack of a personal goal are not the only reasons I fail, but they beat me a large percentage of times.

The question is: “How can I use this knowledge of myself to set worthy goals, to present positive incentives, and to eliminate opportunities to be a disappointment.”

The answer has to be spiritual. I have learned enough about myself and the world in which I live in to know that more is not the answer for me. One phrase that rattles around in my head is “Act like you want to, and you will start to want to.”

I have always been less than great about keeping my tires in the car aired up and replacing them soon enough. I was too lazy to check them and too cheap to replace a tire before it had to be. Fortunately God has looked after me and my family and my poor habits have not impacted our health. My big car still has a warranty and the dealership often sends notices to get service done. I ignore them and ignore them, but this week decided to finally see what needed doing. I learned I had only bought two new tires last time. So, for once I checked the thread depth on the back and front tires and found the rear tires were almost bald. I took it in immediately to get new tires thanking God that had not failed. Driving to a client’s office that day, my little car had steering issues, so I dropped it off when I picked up the big car. Turns out I had never replaced the front tires and although they had tread, they were at least nine years old and were leaking. Again, I thanked God.

I once bought an air compressor to be able to air up the tires at home. I wanted to do better, but I only did marginally better. I even got in the habit of checking tread depths, but never considered a tire not wearing out the tread before it got too old or that the front and back might be different. What is odd about this is I know from an engineering perspective that the tires are the only thing touching the road and therefore critical to car safety. I bought really nice tires for Big D’s car. The incentive is my family’s safety, yet I still never made ensuring the tires were safe a goal before this week.

Beyond my goals for having daily time with God, I am learning that I need to take care of the everyday. That I need to block out time to learn and to interface with others, but I also need to not overlook the tiny occasional stuff that keeps our lives and loved ones going. Maybe a stretch, but a lyric from a Rush song is “We are programmed to receive.” We are programmed to receive God’s love, we are programmed to love others, and we are programmed to ensure the spiritual can be looked at by setting goals and incentivizing ourselves to take care of the everyday. So I set a new goal to be more on top o fth elittle stuff to keep my family healthy longer.