Kicking the Can Down the Road

 

When I was a kid, I loved it when I found a can or a rock on the sidewalk or the street and my friends and I would entertain ourselves by kicking it to see how far we could make it go. We would come up with ingenious ways to kick the object and would make some sort of game out the whole affair to pass the time away. We would make it even more complicated if we threw in another object and tried to kick them both in alternating fashion. Childhood was so full of innocence and imagination. Who could have known at the time that a game I was playing as a kid would actually have real life implications when I grew up. I had effectively kicked the can so far down the road that I grew up and it was no longer a game or a way to pass the time.

This past weekend, I found myself mowing my yard for the first time in about 2 weeks. We had been going through a heat wave and I couldn't muster enough energy or intestinal fortitude to go outside and do the work that needed to be done. I was kicking the can down the road and rationalizing to myself that there would be another time to do it and it would be okay. I was deluding myself and with each passing day, the yard got shaggier and more unkempt. I had nightmares about the homeowners association knocking on my door and evicting my family and I because I was not being a good neighbor. In essence, my kicking the can down the road for another day actually was still a problem that I had to deal with and I needed to stop making the work harder and actually do something about it.

We've all been in those situations before where we put things off because we are certain there is going to be a better time to do it. A time when we have more energy, a time when we are more motivated, or a time when we have a chunk of time to actually do it. We kick the can down the road because we really don't want to invest the time or energy into doing something because we hope it will just go away if we kick it far enough. This is a dangerous game we play because it sometimes can come back to haunt us in unimaginable ways. We take the risk anyway because if it is out of sight, it will be out of mind and we don't have to worry about it. The problem is that we don't live in a vacuum and whether we like it or not, we are moving forward and will inevitably come upon our can again. This is when we actually need to make a choice.

Adulting is hard. We sometimes make it harder because we don't want to make tough decisions and deal with the outcomes of those decisions. Instead, we choose to kick the can down the road and hope that it becomes someone else's problem. You can only do this so many times before you actually have to face the reality that the problem isn't going to go away unless you actually do something actionable to solve it. Well, the first action you can take is to pick up the can instead of kicking it. It may not seem like a huge step, but until you actually pick it up and look at it, you won't know what the problem is you are trying to fix. Sometimes it isn't even a problem at all and in those cases, revert back to your childhood and play the game you invented all those years ago.

#OwnYourEpic #Embrace