“If you sincerely try to do your best to make each day a masterpiece, angels can do no better.” - John Wooden
“Are you busy?” Now there’s three words a lot of us say in near mechanical terms. A little like another three-word phrase, “how are you,” we’ve all been guilty of fielding that query without anticipating any reply beyond “I’m grand, thanks.”
I’ve rarely not been busy since those childhood years when I would happily sit for more than an hour with my head buried in a book.
For a great deal of my time in college, I was beavering away at something in the newsroom at DIT Aungier Street when I’d have better served myself by having a pint with my classmates. For a great many years in my first job, I worked straight through my lunch because, stupidly, I felt it would help me get ahead for the following day. It rarely did.
I think of a time not too long ago when I worked six days a week between newspaper and radio commitments while regularly squeezing in a few hours in on the supposed ‘day off’. For the better part of five years, I was out of bed most Mondays at 4:30am and in front of the laptop by 5am, regularly working through until 8pm that evening. What on earth was I thinking?
However, I can’t look back on any of that and feel too regretful about any of it. When we try and snapshot periods of our lives, we as individuals are the only ones who can call upon the full extent of our own existences.
The things we do to keep going, often through very difficult circumstances that some of us don’t feel like sharing with strangers on Twitter, often feel inexplicable in hindsight. Yet we find our own way to wade through the mud-soaked earth that accompanies life-altering events: rejection, death, relationship breakdowns, office politics, etc.
Punishing one’s self for things that can’t be undone is self-defeating and debilitating. Resolving one’s self to negotiate future obstacles with a little more grace and consideration for both yourself and others, surely that’s a path to growth and self-improvement?
Each and every one of us can be better – and you don’t have to hand someone €250 for a weekend seminar full of buzz words and feel good messages to figure that out.
Expecting someone else to do something that you yourself would never countenance taking on, be it at home or in work, is an act of cowardice. If you want people to follow you, then you have to be willing to wade in. You can’t subcontract leadership.
Consider Erik ten Hag, aged 52, running those 13.8 kilometres with his Manchester United squad after their 4-0 defeat at Brentford last August. He was already shouldering a greater burden than any of his players after United had lost their opening two Premier League matches. But he willingly shared their physical discomfort by taking on that run. And just look at how a group of largely maligned players in recent seasons have responded.
And what on Earth has any of this got to do with a fella working in a regional Irish newspaper, you might ask? I’m 24 years into working life as a journalist. It’s a trade which continues to stimulate me given its equally weighted potential: namely, the power to leave me wide-eyed and resolved or utterly dejected and semi-resigned, wondering if anyone is paying any attention at all.
However, I’m determined to keep plugging away, thinking about that one stroke of luck that may make some of my future stories work in a way that others, to my mystification, still don’t.
But, at 43, approaching 44, I feel more motivated in trying to be a better person, above all else. If great stuff comes my way professionally, that’ll be absolutely fantastic and I’ll relish it.
As I have so regularly over the past working decade, the words of feted UCLA Basketball coach John Wooden provide both solace and fuel for the fire:
“Too often we get distracted by what is outside our control. You can’t do anything about yesterday. The door to the past has been shut and the key thrown away. You can do nothing about tomorrow. It is yet to come. However, tomorrow is in large part determined by what you do today. So make today a masterpiece. You have control over that.”
When one of our dogs curls up on the couch alongside me as the world settles down and I sip on my tea, I have, more than once, allowed myself the following thought: the choices I’ve made in my life have led me to where I am now.
Where I am now is, considering the totality of my life, all that I need. And the more I allow myself to acknowledge that good fortune, the chances are I’ll enjoy my journalism even more – and keep getting better at it.
Comments