There is a discipline I do not have, yet I find myself wishing I did. A discipline of absolute control over one’s being. Not control in the harsh sense of repression, but a quiet mastery — the ability to direct oneself with clarity and intention.
A kind of laser focus on who and where I want to be, and on the person I might yet become.
It seems to be a discipline that only a few possess. You notice it in certain people — an inner alignment where their desires, their actions, and their direction all seem to move along the same line. There is no constant drifting, no wandering from impulse to impulse. Instead there is a steady orientation toward something they have chosen.
But the interesting thing is that this discipline is not really about denial. It is not primarily the act of saying no to life.
Rather, it is the power of saying a deeper yes.
A yes to the person one wants to grow into.
A yes to the work required to shape that life.
A yes to the patience necessary for becoming.
It is not so much the discipline of resisting what we want…but the discipline of wanting something greater. A want strong enough that it quietly orders everything else around it.
Most of us live somewhere between impulses, distractions, responsibilities, and moments of clarity. Occasionally we glimpse that straighter path — that possibility of a more unified self — and we recognize the difference between drifting and directing.
And perhaps that recognition itself is the beginning of the discipline. Because before a person can become what they wish to be, they first have to see — with some honesty — where they are standing now. And from there the question slowly forms: What do I truly want to become… and am I willing to live in a way that makes that becoming possible?
Thoughts For Thinkers 