If you’re someone who takes their commitments seriously, it’s likely you’ve had to show up even when the conditions are sub-optimal. You may have decided to go for a run event though it’s cold and raining. You may have committed to a date night even though you’re exhausted from the week’s obligations. You may have decided to book a vacation even though your work load is continually growing.
Yet, it’s also likely that you see the them as the exception to the rule. That it won’t always be cold and rainy when you decide to go for a run. That you won’t always be tired when date night rolls around. That work won’t always be so damn busy. And while on a case-by-case basis our hopeful thinking may be true, when we take all of life into account we see that less than ideal conditions are wholly inescapable. That the ideal and suboptimal are always interwoven. That even though the weather may be perfect for a run, we may still feel tired on date night, or too swamped at work to consider a vacation.
Because our conditions will always present themselves as a mixed bag, choosing to wait until we discover the ideal is not a viable option. In fact, constantly comparing our lived reality to what we consider to be idyllic could be stopping us from fully embracing all our life has to offer. If we always hold out for better weather we may never hit the trail, if we refuse to show up tired to date night we may never show up at all, if we never accept that work might always be busy we’ll never use our time off.
The solution in each example is to embrace the sub-optimal, and do things we love. The solution is to see unpredictable weather, low energy, and busy schedules as variables and not gatekeepers. The solution is to accept the mixed bag of unknowable conditions as the norm, so we get on with living. When we’re no longer waiting for warmer days, more energy, or a lessened workload we can actually do the things we say we love most.