Kill the man, rather than become him
It all matters. Every discipline and commitment matters. Every day matters, given as a gift by a gracious Lord and Saviour that speaks to us in the toil as much as the silence, if we let Him...
As important as it is to envision the man you're working to become - it's equally important to have a sense of the man you never want to be.
I always had a sense of who that man was. He was a man without life, without vigour. He was a man whose guitars collected dust. He was a man who stared down at his smartphone, repeatedly, dead-eyed, habitually. He was a man who seldom prayed, seldom fasted, and remembered, in a melancholic reverie, what it was like to spill words upon a page with a joyous, manic frenzy that was tempered by a reluctant commitment to order, brevity and efficiency. He was a man whose weight plates became slowly bound together by cobweb and weakness, the barbell never to be warmed by the grip of a determined fist. He was a man who drank too much and read little of note, little of value, worth discussing. He was content with the tripe and dross of an uncurated, dying culture that once celebrated truth, beauty and goodness above every other sensory or aesthetic consideration.
Nobody plans to die their slow deaths. You have to be vigilant, attentive and aware of the slow decline when it creeps in, with the reasonable excuses that make your disciplines seem burdensome and damaging. Death whispers tenderly: you're too tired; you're not well; not tonight; take a break so you can come back stronger, clearer; you need the sleep; it doesn't really matter.
It all matters. Every discipline and commitment matters. Every day matters, given as a gift by a gracious Lord and Saviour that speaks to us in the toil as much as the silence, if we let Him. A slow death creeps in through the cracks of our disciplines. When we become, lax, flaccid, indifferent to the gift of life and the virtue and vocation that defines and sustains us, we lay down our arms and invite this slow death upon ourselves.
It creeps up on me as much as anyone. I get sick and I ease up on training. I push back my internet blocker another hour so I can trawl through posts about music gear, instead of picking up my guitar and creating something new with it. I give up time restricted eating to snack on comfort food late at night. I become intemperate with coffee and give up on my journalling, neglect my writing. One failure feeds another, and day by day, I slip closer and closer to being the man I swore I'd never become.
You need to know the man. You need to recognise him, so you can see the traces of his weakness, his torpor as they creep up on you, as they seek to become you. You need to know him, to find him, to kill him swiftly, mercilessly - rather than realising he's staring back at you from the mirror, while you pretend you never saw him coming.