MOTIVATION DOESN''T LAST?

Someone asked me a while ago, “What motivates you to write every day?”

“To motivate myself to live well,” I answered, without even blinking.

“But, do you need to keep doing it, repeatedly, every day, over and over again?” he wanted to know.

I told him what Zig Ziglar had famously said:

“People, often, say that motivation doesn’t last;

Well, neither does bathing…

That’s why we recommend it daily.”

Now, as I quoted the guru of motivation, I remembered how a priest, in my college days, had hammered into our young-skulls, when one of us had asked him, “Father, why do we have to pray every day, over and over again?”

“Why don’t you ask the same thing about eating?” the priest had shut us up, once and for all. “One is the food for your hungry stomach, the other is the food for your hungry soul,” we were told, sternly.

Today, when I quoted Zig Ziglar, what I tried to convey to the one who had asked me that question was: “My friend, motivation is the food for our hungry hearts.”

If I say that I write everyday to motivate others, I am not only lying, but, I am also being stupid. I write because my heart is hungry to live well… So, I need to motivate myself to satisfy this hunger… and, I need to do it every day, repeatedly, over and over again.

For me, it is writing the way I do. For others, it could be something else… But, there is that ‘something’ for each one of us… something that we need to do every day, repeatedly, over and over again… in order to keep the hunger of our hearts satisfied… Yes, so that we can live well our lives…

“Why do you write every day?” was the question.

“To motivate myself to live well,” was the answer.

The bath… the food… the prayer and, yes, the motivation… all these we need to live well.

GERALD D’CUNHA

Pic.: Mehul Bhuva