Why do we do what we do? We wake up, go to jobs, volunteer, work out, engage in relationships, but what drives us to act? Oftentimes life moves at a pace where it is easy to get sucked into a vortex of un-reflective, uncalculated, unfulfilling and undesired actions. There are a lot of seemingly predetermined paths which we end up on, and if we aren’t careful we end up far down a road which we never hoped for, only to be rattled awake by the fact that we are miserable and ineffective at everything we touch.
In any crime scene investigation, criminal drama, or detective movie one key element to solving the big mystery or getting a hold of a suspect and reaching a conviction is finding a motive. Forensically a motive attaches an action to a purpose, and links behavior to the underlying reasons of why a person decides or decided to do something. Motives are a powerful indicator for identifying a rationale, belief, or state of mind that generates action. Motives unlock the driving forces behind what we do, and can tell us much about the way we act and what we pursue.
Many of us perform periodic assessments of our actions, we carefully scrutinize our budgets, review business performance, assess our diets, look at our schedules, set goals and review our success rate at completing our targets; but what drives it all? Monitoring action is one thing, but scrutinizing action without considering the motive is an incomplete set of data which only provides limited insight in to the way we are living. It is not until we question the driving psychological and spiritual forces that spur us to action that we can have a complete and telling picture of whether or not our performance is on track.
Similar to a detective, we must regularly and without bias engage in a line of questioning whereby we seek out our motives. The line of question shifts from “what did I do?” to “why did I do what I did?” or “why am I doing what I am doing?” The shift from what to why, does not provide a hall pass us from scrutinizing our action, it simply changes the focus of our self reflection to probe deeper into our action to seek a deeper truth about how we’re performing. Most of our goals and pursuits are not inherently bad; however a bad motive can pervert even the noblest of undertakings. If we are financial diligent only out of an obsession of wealth, our financially conservative behavior is in vain. If we are careful to watch our diets and fitness plans only predicated upon insecurities about our image or an unhealthy preoccupation with physical appearance then we’ve taken a perfectly healthy action and allowed it to create an unhealthy foothold in our lives. Knowing the reasons why we do what we do, is an important barometer for understanding the condition of our hearts and minds, not just the performance of our hands. I think what we find is that the actions that are attached to good/healthy/pure motives are the things we do the best, and the things we enjoy doing the most.
I’m in the process of trying to become more disciplined in not simply questioning how I’m performing, but why I’m trying to perform at all. As I have started to look at the driving motivation for a lot of things in my life I have been forced to rebalance my life portfolio to protect myself from myself. There are numerous things that have historically appeared (from the outside) to be great pursuits, however, over time I’ve realized that many, if not all of my undertakings have been corrupted by my sinful nature. I have found that it is easy to allow an irrational pattern of thought to permeate a broad spectrum of behaviors, it is frighteningly simple to maintain the appearance of pure motive while truly living captive to pure psychosis.
We may haphazardly be better than average people, we may even end up being good people by popular opinion, but what is goodness devoid of motive or purpose. If you throw away a half eaten meal that feeds a bum, is your action different than someone who prepares food and goes out seeking to feed the hungry? We mustn’t coincidentally be and do good, we must live lives founded on intention. Living, loving, doing, going, being with purpose, and purpose is what our motives define. So as we move along in our pursuits, maybe it is time that we start taking some contemplative pause to ask “why?”. Is the way we act in relationships being motivated by fear or love? Is the way we perform being motivated out of a desire for acknowledgement and acceptance or by a spirit of reverence for our responsibilities and gifts? Are our desires founded on holiness, or are we simply masking the rottenness of our sin by doing and saying the right things, and trying to be the right kind of people for all the wrong reasons?
The beauty of it all is that as always, even the most tainted of hearts can become vessels for the work of God. Scripture is full of stories of the transformative power of Christ, not only in terms of what we do, but also, why we do. God has a vested interest in our hopes, dreams and desires, and it’s for good reason, our motives and motivation almost assuredly lead to action. If we truly desire changed lives, we have to start with changed hearts. If we truly want to be better people, spiritually, in work place, in homes, in relationships, in every arena, we must be people of purpose and intention, founded on and driven by love, seeking the glory of God not men, motivated, purposeful, effective.
Why do I write?,
CP
http://chrispanoff.blogspot.com
1 comment:
VERY good post
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