Nobody ever said life would be easy (but they would have been wrong)

After a grueling 4+ hours filling in bubbles this morning, I am fully prepared to say that no matter what my SAT score ends up being, I am not taking that test ever again. I am also prepared to say this because I felt very good about my performance on the whole test. (Even at the end when my eyes were throbbing and my head was pounding and my arm was begging me to please PLEASE not fill in another circle.) Now only time will tell. But at least I can stop thinking about the SAT.

I was scheduled to meet with a web client this afternoon. But after I returned home in all my exhaustedness, I called him, and it turned out he was busy as well. So, mercifully, we were able to reschedule for next week, and I judiciously used my extra time to its full advantage by passing out on my bed for three or four hours—a nap that can only feel quite that good after a week of sleep deprivation and a strenuous morning.

This evening Mom and Dad and I watched In Good Company, a movie that they had already seen but which I have wanted to see since it came out a couple years ago. I was not disappointed; the story was interesting, the characters were compelling and well-acted, and the writing was witty and insightful.

The story was, in a lot of ways, about growing up—or more generally about moving between stages in one’s life. There is a moment in the middle of the film when Topher Grace’s young hotshot boss character reminds Dennis Quaid’s middle-aged father character that the latter cannot afford to lose his job—he has people counting on him. In the next shot, we see Dennis Quaid’s character returning home late at night, and as he walks up the stairs in his home to go to bed, he cracks open the door of his younger daughter’s bedroom, as he always does, to make sure she is asleep and safe. And we realize, as we see his home and his children and his wife, and remember that he has another child on the way and a daughter to put through college, that Topher Grace’s character was right. He can’t afford to talk back to his new boss or risk his job—he has to have a means to support his family.

And in that moment, for some strange reason, I was suddenly reminded of my own situation. Not because I’m a middle-aged father or because I have to have a paycheck (I am still in highschool, for goodness’ sake), or even because I have that many people counting on me, but because I recognized the feeling of weight on that character’s shoulders. He had a load of very real responsibilities which he could not ignore—he could not squirm out of them or procrastinate them away. They were his to keep, and he had to look them squarely in the face or destroy the life he had built.

I don’t know if you’ve picked it up yet, but my natural tendency is to push away things that make me feel uncomfortable or panicky. That can include any number of responsibilities; schoolwork is probably the most obvious example. But in the last several months, I have been faced with the reality that I cannot operate that way. I cannot just dismiss my responsibilities. I’m not sure why this has hit home so much recently; perhaps it is the number of (very helpful) talks my father has given me on the subject, or perhaps it is the fact that I have been taking on more and more responsibilities that simply cannot be pushed away. I can’t just tell my client that his website isn’t ready on time because I “didn’t feel like working on it.” That doesn’t cut it in business or schoolwork or really anywhere in life.

So it occurred to me as I sat there watching this movie: maybe this intense pressure that is gripping me these days, the one that is making me realize how many people are counting on me and how I am not free to waste my time anymore, maybe that feeling is not a temporary response to the amount of responsibilities I happen to have at the moment—maybe it is adulthood peeking its head around the corner into my life. And maybe those times when I just wish it would all go away, so I could just sit by myself and hide from all the demands on my time and energy, maybe that is childhood trying to hang onto my life.

I know that I will never be completely “cured” of my procrastination. It is ingrained in my self in a way that I am only beginning to understand. But when life throws you a lemon, you can either sit there wallowing in sourness, or you can make lemonade. And it seems God throws us lemons for that very purpose. So I can either succumb to the effortlessness of letting my responsibilities and commitments slip through my fingers, or I can grab hold of those responsibilities, look them squarely in the face and realize: “These are my responsibilities. I have to fulfill them even if they’re not easy or they make me uncomfortable or unhappy.”

Even when the right choice is so obvious, however, I know my own sinfulness and stubbornness and forgetfulness will get in the way of my remembering those words as clearly as I read them on the page right now. But with God’s grace, I hope and pray that my life will be a story of moving toward responsibility and maturity, not away from it.

Posted on Sunday, June 4th, 2006 at 1:09 am.
Belongs with: Things to think about.
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