You’re on vacation, sitting on the beach, watching your children play in the water. Everyone is full of sunshine and smiles. You think to yourself, “I’ve got a great family here. We’re doing alright.”
Then, you have another thought. You remember being a kid on vacation with your family growing up and the fun you had on those trips. But, your parents ended up getting divorced, and you and your sister no longer talk. Those good times by the ocean didn’t presage good times ahead.
We typically take stock of the state of something — our life, a relationship, an organization — at significant moments in time. Sometimes those are celebrations and successes, where we observe the extent to which feelings of warmth and momentum are in residence. Sometimes they are crises and emergencies, where we witness just how much a group does (or doesn’t) pull together.
These kinds of peaks and valleys can tell you something, to be sure. But a more accurate gauge of health is found in life’s more mundane moments.
It’s great that you and the wife are feeling a renewed attraction on your trip to Barcelona, but how often are you feeling the spark on a workday evening?
It’s great your church rallied around a bereaved parishioner, but how often are folks showing up to regular Sunday services?
It’s great when people are happy when everything about a situation has been designed to elicit that emotion, and are engaged when external forces prompt them to action, but how are things going amidst life’s ordinary routines?
It’s the little daily habits that predict how the future will unfold. It’s how you show up in run-of-the-mill interactions that foretells if a relationship will last. If you want a crystal ball as to what’s to come, just check how you’re doing on a Tuesday morning.
