Desire or Disaster?
I was re-listening to a podcast by Jon Acuff with Juliet Funt, author, consultant, and daughter of Allen Funt, the creator of reality TV through Candid Camera. If you are around my age you know exactly what I’m talking about. If not, then congratulations… you are talented at the Google thing.
Take time to go check it out if you want, but to save you a little time I am going to give you the nugget that is stuck in my craw.
Let’s stop for a minute and talk about that Southern phrase. The phrase did not actually originate in the South, but it sure was prolific there, or at the very least in my South. It comes from a bird’s anatomy. The craw, also known as the crop, is an area in a bird’s throat where food is temporarily stored prior to digestion. If something gets stuck in a bird’s craw, the bird cannot swallow it and it causes irritation and distress. We will come back to this.
Because of that, people—especially where I grew up in Enterprise, Alabama, home of the boll weevil—used it metaphorically to describe something that bothers you, something you cannot emotionally swallow, or something that sticks with you and irritates you. It was a huge part of storytelling in the South and I still use it quite often because it reminds me that when something irritates me or bothers me enough, I will usually do something about it.
But this podcast made me wonder something a little deeper. Do we always have to wait for disaster to motivate us, or can we be motivated by desire?
In the podcast, Juliet is mostly talking about corporate leaders and how they lead. She makes the point that leaders are far more effective when they are relatable and kind, but many of them only change when things go way south and they can no longer lead effectively and their own lives start unraveling right along with their companies’. The more I thought about that, the more I realized that it is probably true for most of us.
Jon asked Juliet what percentage of people change because of desire and how many change because of disaster. Her answer, as you might imagine, was heavier on disaster. She went on to explain that most of us will not even go to physical therapy until we are in such pain or so immobilized that we finally have no choice.
That made me wonder if we humans can start letting the desire for a better, healthier life move us to change before things get that far. Looking back over my own life, most of the meaningful changes I have made came because of a crisis, a disaster, or sometimes a combination of the two. It took a health scare to make me pay attention to my health. It took credit card debt to make me pay attention to my spending.
So what does it take to make us change?
These days I find myself asking God to show me, through the stories and insights of others, how to work on myself before the elevator reaches the bottom or before the big thing gets stuck in my craw.
For now, I am adopting a new soundtrack and mantra: Working on myself is a joy and a privilege.
You are welcome to take that one if you like. I borrowed it from the podcast, and I am hoping—hope upon hope—that I can spend the rest of my days being motivated by something other than disaster.
This love note is a big one for me so that I remember to pay attention to what is stuck in my craw so I am motivated more by desire rather than disaster!!!
