Always Something To Do

To my son Tommy,

There will be mornings when you wake up under the illusion (or perhaps I should say delusion) that you have nothing to do.  That happened to me this morning.  I woke up at the usual time, and was completely bored and without direction.  I normally do not attend morning mass on Saturdays since I attend afternoon confession.  And since it is the weekend I technically do not have to work.  Your mother wasn't up yet to fill my dance card and you were still in dreamland yourself.

The first thing you have to do when you get this feeling or notion is to be honest with yourself.  There is always something to do.  As I sat and thought about all the things I should be doing today, my list filled fast.  I could use the time to catch up because I am behind at work; I could straighten up the living room; I could get ready to finish trimming up the front lawn and start working on the back lawn.  And that was just personal things.  If you ever find yourself bored, you can find something to do that isn't normally on your list; I could visit relatives; I could go for a walk;  I could read; I could call up a soup kitchen and volunteer my idle hours;  Or make a dish for "Our Daily Bread"; or go borrow a puppy from the pound and bring it to a retirement home for an hour.  You see there are many things to be done.

If you are honest with yourself, you will find that you are CHOOSING not to do anything.  That is okay to do.  Sometimes you need to have time to "just be".  But don't delude yourself and think you have no obligations.  Your duties are just put off not forgiven.  The problem with doing nothing however, to paraphase John Corey a character in the books by Nelson Demille one of my favorite authors , is you never quite know when you are done.  You can get stuck "doing nothing" all day, all week, or all the time.  Everything is piling up but you have gotten yourself into a rut of inactivity.  Newton's Law of Inertia, though meant to describe physics, fits perfectly into this example.  An object at rest tends to stay at rest...

So I got up off my butt and headed into church.  It is an hour later on Saturdays than the other days so that was perfect as I sat there figuring out that I didn't want to to do nothing all day.  I figured starting the day like this would get some momentum.  After church I headed to Bob Evans for some carry out to bring back for breakfast.  You and your mom were up when I got home and we ate and spent some time trying to figure out one of your movie requests (what you ask for and the title of the movie rarely match).  I sat down to write this letter and now I have to take this little spark and gently grow it into a blaze of getting things done.

Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo