Greg Hartnett

I refuse to buy into the adage that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. That statement assumes that we are a particular person. In reality, we are not any one particular thing, or any one particular way. We are constantly evolving. You are not the same as you were yesterday, you won’t be the same person tomorrow. Hell, you’ll even be a little different after you read this post - both mentally, and physically.

Nothing is. Nothing has been written in stone about how you can act. You haven’t been prescribed a standard by which you must adhere. Every moment of life presents an opportunity to make a choice. Each time you meet somebody new, each time you speak to your child, each time you get something to eat, each time a coworker asks you for help. All of these scenarios provide you the opportunity of choice. How will you choose to act?

Throughout the course of my marriage, there have been times when my wife will lament over a particular trait I may have - maybe how it takes her three times to get me to act on taking out the garbage, or putting the toilet seat down. To which I usually reply, “Don’t try to change me - that’s the way that I am”. But is that the way that I am? Lazy? Unresponsive? Generally, I would say no. I like to think that I typically choose to act in a productive and/or quick manner. But hey, sometimes I am lazy. And unresponsive.

So where I am going with this? Nowhere in particular. Sometimes a journey is worth taking just for the sake of it, with no destination in mind. I am trying to work on changing some of the things in my life that have become habitual. For the time being I am content in the knowledge that I am free to choose as I please, and be the man that I aspire to be. Maybe I’ll even start to like Bruce Springsteen or low-fat salad dressing.