Just Do It

Six years of age. You sit at the dinner table, a pile of cold green beans on the plate. There's nothing left; no one else at the table, all your potatoes and meat have been devoured. Just you and the green beans are left to battle it out.

Mom said to eat them. And no, she wasn't going to give you more potatoes to swallow them down with. You already tried that.

So you stare at them and you hate them. The longer you stare, the more you hate. And pretty soon you begin to look for ways out of confronting them. Put them in a napkin and toss it in the garbage. Throw them outside. Put them back into the pan.

But after all of those ideas are exhausted, you find yourself still sitting there staring at the uneaten heap of veggies.

--

It never occurred to me as a child that half of the pain in eating those green beans, was from putting it off for so long. What irony; that I thought it would be easier, or that it would "go away" if I ignored it for long enough. Ha!

I thought when I came to college things would be different. Don't know why. After all, it's not as if I transferred to another planet. Everyday there's something I don't wanna do, and everyday I sit at that table and plow through the same thoughts as I did eleven years ago: "Is there any way to get around this? This is stupid. Why should I do this? I'll just put it off for a while and maybe I'll forget about it."

However, I've started (after being told frequently by numerous sources) to make myself do the things I don't want to. Immediately. The moment I think to myself, "Oh I most definitely don't want to do that," is when its time for me to lace up my combat boots and get my rear in gear (as Papa is so fond of saying}.

And that doesn't just go for homework and the mundane tasks of everyday life, it also goes for those things I don't want to do because I'm scared of failure; or I'm afraid of judgment.

In the end, the more wasted time making up excuses and complaining about the problem gives me nothing but lukewarm green beans and lost time.