Discipline

I didn’t really learn discipline until recently. Oh, I had enough discipline so that my family and I could get to eat and have shelter, enough discipline so I could endure a job for decades and thus not appear like a completely useless fuckup to the outside world. Enough discipline so that after three months of inactivity I would do some exercise for a month or two. Enough so that I would only drink on weekends and holidays. But it was only ever just enough. Just enough to keep the wolf from the door, just enough to not be an embarrassment to society.

My heroes when I was growing up were all hard-drinking, drug-taking womanisers. I loved these guys. I wanted to be them. The amazing drug addled jazz musicians, the alcoholic writers, the flawed, cavalier sportsman. To this day I still marvel at how they produced any output at all, let alone some of the genius works of art they gave the world. Why wouldn’t I want to be like these people. What else would I want to be? An accountant?

I always loved the sportsmen who appeared to have the most natural talent, because that’s what I wanted to be. I didn’t want to have to work for it. In fact in some weird sense I used to believe that it was somehow less genuine if you had to work for it. Maybe phrases like God given talent encourage that way of thinking.

When I was in my early twenties and just starting out in the workplace, I decided that I would take my twenties for drinking, partying, travelling and then when I reached my thirties I would settle down, have a family, and get serious about a career. Wow a whole decade for partying. What a deal! I gleefully accepted.

The idea of partying for a decade has its challenges, but I met those challenges head on. I set out to party for a decade and dammit I partied for a decade. But I didn’t have the talent or the intermittent discipline of my heroes, so I exited my twenties all partied out, ready to get myself a wife and a career but with nothing to back me up. No skills, no faith, no discipline, no money, just a lingering sense of failure and emptiness.

Well, I’m 50 now and I’m getting on track. I did ok in my 30s and 40s. I did enough. And now at 50 I’m learning to love discipline. The mental peace that comes with it. The elegance. The fact that it just works, like a lovingly crafted hand-built piece of furniture. The drawers fit perfectly, they slide in and out with ease. The legs are balanced. The piece is sturdy and able to take great weight.

Discipline is everything I thought indiscipline would be. It’s joyous and confident and my goodness is it a conduit for creativity.