Sloth

It’s easy to point a finger at someone else, and decry ignorance. The hard part is to look in ourselves. What do we ignore?

There’s a level of anxiety each of us carry. It doesn’t have to do with our personal life. It concerns the world around us. In Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, he calls this the Circle of Concern. That circle contains the things we are aware of, the things that we know affect us. Some things we can do something about. Those are in our Circle of Influence.

The anxiety we feel is something everyone before us had to deal with. Wars, plague, famine, despot kings and tyrannical dictators – there’s always something. Something that threatens the way we live. Only a few people are able to do something. The writers of the Declaration of Independence felt that if someone was able to do something, it was their duty to do so. Some sacrificed their lives for that. Others people went about their lives as usual, as best they could.

I think the men who wrote the Declaration wanted that. I don’t believe they intended everyone to take up arms, and fight bloody old King George. At least, I think they hoped it wouldn’t come to that. I think they fought and worked, so most people didn’t have to fight.

Not all of us can do something about what we’re concerned about. The War in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, poverty, hunger in Africa, the environment, and whatever popular conspiracy theory is hot – so many things to be concerned about.

Each of us must ignore some things to go about our daily life. It’s the only way to get through the day. It’s difficult to face our own contribution to the problems we’re concerned about. Our consumer society depends on ignorance; our own.

As I look around, and consider the things I’m concerned about –and my contribution to making them better or worse- it becomes difficult to determine how I should live. I realize I ignore many things around me, things that concern me, whenever I do something as simple as eat dinner, brush my teeth, and drive to work.

How far away from the mindset of the framers of the Declaration of Independence have we come? What do we ignore, because of our dependencies?

Okay, enough of that deep crap.

This is my first attempt at using the Microsoft Word Blogger Add-in, so I hope it goes well. If you’re reading this post, and the links are working, it did. Next time, I’m going to try it with pictures. I’ll try to give you some decent one. Maybe a few indecent ones, too. The links for today are in the text, so have at them.

Today:
Today, I studied, but not as much as I intended. No clients today. Didn’t do Yoga either. I’ve really been dealing with sinus headaches a lot lately. Today, it was to the point of distraction. I hate anti-biotics, and I broke down and used them for a cycle a few weeks ago, but the sinus headaches are back. I’m wondering if it’s just part of the whole tension thing.

I’ll be starting some part-time work soon, till my Personal Training business picks up. I hate not working. My sloth-ness wants to consume me. Like a disease.