I’m reading Thomas Merton’s autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain. He says lots of thoughtful things in it. Here’s one of them, from his pre-Christian school days:

“I had begun to get the idea that I was a Communist, although I wasn’t quite sure what Communism was. There are a lot of people like that. They do no little harm by virtue of their sheer, stupid inertia, lost in between all camps, in the no-man’s land of their own confusion. They are fair game for anybody.”

And I think that’s a terribly true sentiment, because really, when you think about it, the way you came to where you are—intellectually, geographically, vocationally, spiritually—often has less to do with real deliberate thoughtfulness and more to do with sheer, stupid inertia.

This is not to say you didn’t work hard or think for a long time or make important decisions along the way, but most of what got you to where you are is not genuine intentionality, but rather things like tradition, expectation, privilege, good/bad fortune, and a haphazard pursuit of the American Dream. Or sometimes it was because you got nudged down a course and just kept going.

Newton told us an object in motion will stay in motion.  Like a bowling ball on a salt flat, it will keep going along in the same direction unless acted upon by an outside force. The same is true for us. We’re always moving, and sometimes the pinball machine of life bumps us into new positions or relationships or ways of thinking, and that’s normal. But if you don’t pause once in a while to assess, to raise a finger to sense which way the wind is blowing you, who knows where you might find yourself? Maybe nowhere. Maybe somewhere where, if you’d spent even a moment thinking about it, you’d know you don’t want to be.

I think about my own job and friends and life direction. I think about some of the things I think and some of the things I thought when I was younger. Sometimes I think, Man, I’m still going down this road. I’m still doing the same things. Or, Thank heaven someone talked me out of that nonsense!

Sometimes the continuity is good. Sometimes not. The present point is less about what direction you’re going (though that, of course, matters a great deal), and more about whether it’s a direction you chose or one that just happened to you.

It’s this inertia that, if left unchecked, will make us convinced of things that, if caught early on, we could be talked out of with only the slightest bit of sense. It’s this inertia that will keep us in a relationship that isn’t good for us, or going after a relationship that obviously will never happen. It’s this inertia that, very possibly, will find us waking up in ten years in a job we never really planned on, thinking, How did I get here? This was supposed to be the thing that led to the next thing. This was supposed to be for the summer.

I wouldn’t change much about the years I spent in school or at my job, and I wouldn’t trade my friends for anything, but I’m coming to realize that if I don’t stop and think about what I’m doing, I could very well follow this same road until, fifty or sixty years from now, the car of my existence sputters off into a nursing home and I die.

Maybe that’s not bad… if it’s a good road.

But maybe it is, especially if I keep going because This is what I’ve always done or What else would I do? or Hmm, I’ve never thought about that. Then it’s not anything deliberate moving me along, it’s just time and momentum. It’s that sheer, stupid inertia.

The Lord, I am certain, is faithful whether we follow a long, featureless, turn-less road, or one marked with lots of new jobs and new adventures and changing scenery. But he gave us neither minds of discernment nor hearts for adventure nor duties to “Go!” in order that we might simply stroll, meandering blindly, thoughtlessly down the same uncurving road forever. Dead things can’t go upstream.

We ought not be hypercritical, hyper-sensitive, hyper-cautious about life. Sometimes you just need to commit to a path and go for a while. But life is also about readjustment.

Some of us find ourselves forever agreeing with whatever author we read most recently. Some of us are sticking to the script we wrote years ago or are hung up on the first thing that came along. Some of us are waiting, waiting, waiting for something better to just happen to us.

Don’t.

At least, not without reading new books and editing old scripts and questioning, questioning, questioning.

Because when I wake up in ten or twenty years and ask myself, as I tend to, “How did I get here?” I want to have a better answer than sheer, stupid inertia.

Griffin Jackson

After a few years spent correcting grammatical errors and writing subtle, clever headlines in a Chicago newsroom, Griffin Paul Jackson (’11) now does aid work with refugees in Lebanon. He writes about that, God, and, when the muse descends, Icelandic sheep. Read him here: griffinpauljackson.com.