Taking a Chance

Discipline is the courage to follow what we love.

I first heard this empowering definition many years ago and immediately adopted it. The words made intuitive sense and offered a whole new to approach discipline.   Instead of a necessary moral work that I should do, discipline might be about following an unfolding path or moving toward some mysterious aliveness that beacons.

Over the years, I have found this definition to be more complicated than it appears on the surface. The first problem is ‘What do I love?’   I love my partner, my daughter, my friends, my garden. I love connecting with people, being of use, sharing what I know, going for walks, sitting in meditation, being in nature, going on canoe trips with my sisters, playing trains with my grandson. I love watching TV in the evening with my partner, drinking a delicious craft beer, eating blue cheese, learning some new skill, using my body, making sculptures out of random rocks, finding the right words and rhythms as I’m writing, being surprised, talking to my mother on the phone, accomplishing things with other people, improvising.

So what does all this, and more, have to do with discipline? Discipline is the courage to follow what you love, sounds like some great romantic adventure toward a lofty goal. I imagine the music I might have played if I had practiced my alto saxophone in high school and beyond with discipline and intention. What gorgeous jazz I might have been a part of? What compositions and recordings might have emerged? What adventures would I have been part of?

But perhaps following what we love is easier and less heroic. Or maybe easier and still, in some way, heroic. What if the small things count? The little things that catch our attention and tickle our fancy? What if there is not some great love that we have to uncover and follow like the knight in a fairytale? What if we don’t have to be artistic geniuses or find our one true love? What if a full life has a thousand loves and each one is true?

Then where does the courage come in? How much courage does it take to do the little things that bring you alive? How much courage does it take to notice the little things that bring you joy and give yourself to them? In my experience—plenty. Though once we give ourselves permission and step over the line, the thing itself flows with its own rhythm, it is the stepping over the line that takes the courage.

We are the only ones who can allowing ourselves to love what we love, to be drawn to what we are drawn to and to move in that direction, if only for a few moments. It is not about waiting for someone else’s permission. Following even these little streams of life, even for short intervals of time requires us to trust our inner lives. To plant a few seeds inside in a pot of damp earth while the snow is still on the ground. To make a pot of tea and sit down with a magazine for twenty minutes in the middle of it all. To spend an hour arranging the objects on your mantle until they are just right. To call a friend to talk without any special need or purpose.

These are all acts of following—acts of courage. It’s not about the outcome but about the following. The point is not what happens next, the point is what’s happening now. When we head in this direction, toward what brings us alive, it’s not about the outcome. Of course we may hope that our seeds sprout and grow strong and end up in this summers garden. Or that Jill Lapore has written another article in this week’s New Yorker. Or that we find the perfect arrangement (for the moment) or that our friend is there when we call. But the real point is the following and in the following no measurement is possible.

So maybe discipline doesn’t have to involve a grand love and a huge amount of courage. But maybe it matters a whole lot just the same. So my prayer for today is to be awake to the many streams of life that call to me. May I practice saying yes, even briefly, to the love that touches me in a thousand ways.