Change is hard, which I understand is a brand new revelation for you. I’ll pause and give you a moment.
I have a goal toward improved physical health–I haven’t felt healthy in my body for a good while, and I want to feel healthier. It’s not about any one change, though I could pick from a laundry list: lower weight, improved exercise tolerance, fewer aches and pains, clearer skin, lower triglycerides, higher levels of engagement with others, longevity…and on and on. I place zero moral judgment on these goals or changes. I do not see them as good or bad. A goal is simply a goal.
In the past, where my goal setting has run aground is in assigning some twisted Amanda-morality to my goals. I’ve striven to set good goals and eschew bad habits and perfectly attain both.
For some time now I’ve embraced the mantra, more often than not. More often than not, I will make the decision that leans into my goal. More often than not, I will choose the food that embraces my goals over the food that turns aside from them, the daytime activity and the nighttime sleep, the neutral posture toward a situation over the unhelpfully charged one.
Last night, Middling asked me to help him wake at five o’clock in the morning. I have not been awake on purpose at such an hour since, well, I’m not sure when. But I recognized in him a desire to change, to choose differently toward his goals. So I set my alarm for five o’clock, began to read, and likely fell asleep with a book on my face, as I am wont to do. As it happened, I woke at 4:51am. Odd but not very odd, since I have a tendency to waken just before an alarm.
I played today’s Wordle and then drifted down the hallway and beckoned Middling from sleep. He protested, lightly. I reminded him that he chose this, that I was up because he asked me to be, and that he had things he wanted to accomplish. Then I turned the light on to a dim setting and returned to my rooms to prepare for the day.
At 5:33am I revisited his re-darkened room and woke him a second time. I turned the light a bit brighter and went to the kitchen. Somewhere around 5:45am, Middling stumbled bleary-eyed into the kitchen and groused. It was impossible, he said. He’d read too late, he said. He’d not fallen asleep until 3:30am, he said.
The problem was this: he wanted my permission to go back to bed. I hadn’t been the one requiring him to arise at five o’clock in the first place, so it was scarcely my permission he needed. I recognized in him what I’ve so often seen in myself: a desire and effort to lob my decisions to someone else. To obtain their permission as if theirs is more legitimate than my own. To seek their protest when I already waver but prefer to disclaim choice. To tell me whether my pursuit is wise or worthy or possible or likely.
Middling, I said, your decision to go back to bed or to stay up is not a moral one. It is neither good nor bad; you have no immediate obligation or commitment to fulfill. You know the latest you can get up. You know what you could do in this early time to catch up or get ahead. This is not a decision over which to blow up your morning or mine. I’m already up, and I’m staying up, but maybe I’ll be in bed this afternoon. Because sleep and wakefulness are physical necessities each must balance. Wakefulness is not innately good while sleep is innately bad. Nor is sleep innately good while wakefulness is innately bad. They are physical states of humanity, equally necessary in some amount for everyone. So go back to bed or get on with your day. And more often than not, choose the thing that gets you closer to your goals.
He went back to bed. In a way, I gave him permission. Or, at least, I have a high level of confidence he heard my words as permission. As challenging as it may be to see him struggle toward his goals, that feeling is nothing compared to stealing his opportunity to struggle by taking the choices that are reasonably his and making them mine.
I potentially “saved” him from the struggle of staying awake this morning. I cannot save him from the trickling consequences of staying up late or returning to sleep this morning. I have plenty of trickling consequences of my own to herd like so many cats.
If on this eighteenth day of twenty-twenty-four you feel some kind of way about the goals you’ve set, the countless choices you’ve made, or your level of progress, I encourage you to think in terms of more often than not. And maybe I encourage myself to do the same.