Omer Day 23: Stick-to-itiveness and the Black and White Cookie

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Stick-to-itiveness. Dogged perseverance. Endurance in discipline. Persistence.

It's the focus of Omer Day 23: maintaining discipline, and on the surface it's a good way to approach life.

Make goals, daily plans of action, a purpose and stick to them. It's a good thing. 

But it's also got a potentially deadly downside: Stick-to-itiveness becomes rigidity, and rigidity careens into physical and spiritual exhaustion. Blinkered single-mindedness chops away at creativity until we're cut down by the "not ever in our history" mentality that says that since we didn't do it before, we can't do it now. Stick-to-itiveness morphs into the negativity of "if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got."

And while black and white cookies may be good for the soul, a black and white disciplined life is soul numbing. And even black and white cookies have that fine line distinguishing the chocolate from the vanilla, a line that's often smudged and rarely perfect.

The opposite of stick-to-itiveness is not letting it all hang out. No ... it's wearing discipline like a loose garment. 

For today, let me focus on the loose and loving garment of gentle discipline, the black and white cookie with the slightly smudgy edges. Or better yet, instead of cutting the cookie down the middle between the black and white, consider cutting it sideways so that you get a little chocolate and a little vanilla in one big bite.