Discipline’s Domination Part I

Anna walked out of the office barely holding back her tears. She had just been fired again. And it was so unjust! She simply had to paint her nails for her party tonight. What if she didn’t get to the phone quick enough? After all, the company had a great voice mail system. What difference did it make whether she answered the phone or the machine answered the phone, anyway? And Alice had been so snotty about it, reminding her of all the other times she had been asked not to let the phone go to voice mail. Really! So Alice fired her. Did she have to bring up the past?

As Anna started to walk through the bustling crowd of people around her she began to cry in earnest. It just was not fair. Everyone else was so happy. They had money to spend and seemed to be doing exactly what they wanted. Why couldn’t she start to get ahead?

John passed Anna on the street so intent on keeping his schedule that he did not even notice her tears. He certainly was not one of the ‘happy’ people that she just portrayed ‘everyone’ to be. He felt as if his life was going nowhere. He never met new people. Very rarely went out of the house besides for errands and work. But then, he just did not have the time to get out. Dinner was at six. He could eat, clean the kitchen and then relax till seven thirty. Then he would exercise for thirty minutes and follow that up with a quick shower After that he would balance his checkbook, read his mail and do all those other little tasks never seem to end. Then the evening was done and it was time to go to bed. John had trained himself to his routine so tenaciously that he never considered changing it for even one night.

Unhappiness radiated from John as he walked down the busy sidewalk with his head hanging low and shoulders bent forward. He felt as if he was treading through a quagmire day after day; week after week. He could hear all the chatter around him and wondered how all these other people managed to find time to be so happy. “Probably unorganized”, he thought to himself. “I bet most of them don’t even balance their checkbooks.”

Here are two extreme personalities in our society. Anna with her total lack of self-control and John with his self-imposed rigidity outwardly appear to be as opposite as any two people could be. However, their base issue is the same. These two individuals, like many of us, are allowing discipline to control their lives and, unless they learn to control discipline themselves, they will never experience true joy in their lives.

Already I hear the outcries from the reading audience! “How do you figure?” “You’ve lost your mind!” “Anna has no discipline in her life while John has managed to develop an outstanding ability to keep a schedule.” How could they have the same problem? In fact, does John really have a problem? Our society sees someone who can keep a good schedule as a person who has a superior grasp on life. This individual definitely does not appear, by our society norms, to have a personality problem.

Well, to answer all your questions – and to defend my position – we need to first define some terms. Merriam-Webster Online gives three pertinent definitions of discipline for this discussion and one for joy.

See Part II


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