it's not easy

"The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become." - Charles DuBois

this quote was just posted as a comment by a gentle reader :). it summarizes beautifully my thought process as i drove today to san jose and back, then walked up to south hall; my daily dose of thinking was quintupled, and to good purpose. the same thought plagued me over and over - when it is clear what the right thing to do is (and sometimes it isn't, but when it is), what keeps us from doing it? the answer, as c and i agreed: it's not always easy. but there are so many occasions when we find ourselves doing the harder thing, no? i mean, we train for marathons. they're not easy, but we run them - because we realize we're doing ourselves a favor. it may not be easy to keep ourselves from eating that extra brownie, but we do it - because we know that restraint is good for us. and sometimes, even going to class is not easy, but we do it for the gain of knowledge. we even go through years of being in a difficult job, because (for some reason or other) we decide it is teaching us something. so - different tasks vary in difficulty rating - but we are the better for doing them, and so we must. yep, it's really as simple as that.