i believe that one of the things that marks a positive life is being able to draw inspiration and encouragement from the little things that happen in life. if you can get the boost of energy from the smallest positive sign instead of waiting for things to finally start breaking your way completely, then you’re going to be able to live positively more often than not. unfortunately for most of us, we get lost in the negative things that we are blinded to the little things.

lately i’ve been in one of my ruts. it’s the type of thing that we all go through. nothing terrible is going on. nothing that’s even considered bad is going on. it’s just nothing good is going on either. everything has turned into a big routine. wake up. go to work. talk about the same things we talked about yesterday. come home. go to bed. and repeat.

it’s easy to get really down and really negative when ruts come along. i haven’t been motivated to do my schoolwork. i know that it’s less than four months until i graduate and i just have to push through this, but quite frankly, i don’t want to. and that’s normal.

all i needed was something positive to happen.

all i need was some source of motivation.

all i need was something. just something.

and i found that something in two places that i never would’ve expected it. they were two situations that had absolutely nothing to do with me. i had no impact on them but they have had an impact on me.

the first situation comes from our basketball team. i traveled with them on their road trip to high point this past wednesday and thursday. it was their first game since losing their leading scorer and only senior. in pre-game chapel, our coach was talking about the story of david. he pointed out that there are things in life that happen to us that aren’t fair. it wasn’t fair that our team had lost our only senior. he continued and said that the most important thing in those situations is how you respond to them.

and the way they responded was by getting run out of the gym and losing by almost thirty.

on the bus home after the game, you could tell that the players were disappointed. for the first hour, the bus was completely quiet. but then something changed. they started talking to each other and started talking about the next game. they didn’t focus on what had just happened but started to look at what they had to do next.

yesterday i saw about 45 minutes of practice. we were interviewing our head coach after it was over and he held them a little longer than planned. i saw that group of guys work as hard or harder than i’d seen them work all season. they were energetic and enthusiastic and making an effort to move on and make the best of their situation. they had one day to prepare for the best team in the league, a team that by all means should beat us by twenty points this year.

tonight, they won that game.

the other situation comes from one of my best friends. he’s one of the first people i met when i came to liberty. i actually met him before i transferred when i was up here staying with a friend. we had classes together. we lived together for a little while. he walked across the stage right before i did when we graduated.

when we graduated, the job market sucked (it still does). i ended up going to grad school which is something that he had absolutely no desire to do. i ended up completely lucking into the job that i have now. he didn’t have that luck. he was stuck at his crappy part time job that he hated and didn’t really know where he was going to go next.

he was in a crappy situation and there weren’t many options to get out of it. instead of sitting and sulking and complaining about it, he took it upon his own to find a way out. he had always talked about joining the military and finally he decided he was going to do it. it meant basically giving up his plans to work in what his degree was in. it meant starting from scratch. it meant going through boot camp.

but it was a solution.

this weekend, he graduated from boot camp and is officially a part of the united states air force.

two situations that were completely unrelated. two situations that i had absolutely no part in. but two situations that motived and inspired me.

our basketball team showed that even when everything is going wrong, you can still be rewarded for working your butt off and not giving up.

my friend showed that sometimes you have to make your own luck and take a risk. he showed that it’s not worth it to just survive in a crappy situation. he showed that sometimes you have to throw away what you’ve been working on and move on to something else, even when that seems crazy to some people.

ruts happen. routines happen. they’re not fun, but they’re part of life. how you respond to them is what’s important. how you respond to them shows what type of person you really are.

i’m just lucky i have people around me that can remind me of that.

say your prayers and take your vitamins.

have a nice day.

-jonathan