John W. Gardner wrote over 50 years ago, “The self-renewing man … looks forward to an endless and unpredictable dialogue between his potentialities and the claims of life — not only the claims he encounters but the claims he invents.”
What have you claimed today? Is it just ‘another’ Monday?
Self-renewal comes with today not just being another Monday, but seeing it as a gift. That being the gift of existence, presence, and the opportunity for awakening and renewal between sunrise and sunset. ‘Another’ has monotonous connotation to it, but a gift is unwrapped because we wonder what newness is under its wrapping.
Have you claimed just to have a job? The hope of self-renewal rests in not just sitting within your so-called job, but actively participating with it in the midst of your story and the grand story we are all collectively in. ‘Job well done’ always follows a life seeking to be well spent.
Until one’s palate is sophisticated for such endeavors towards daily renewal, it will never fully know what potential is there to behold.
What else are you claiming?
Perhaps the question itself is enough to invent an answer, a song, and a story to be renewed every day and thereafter.
Are you counting down the days? Or is today day one? Literally, your answer makes all the difference in the world.
Ashton.Gustafson 