You’ve Been Putting It Up Your Whole Life

Note: This post originally appeared on The Good Men Project and was directed toward men. But the ladies will find value here as well.

In the film No Country for Old Men, Javier Bardem plays Anton Chigurh, a mysterious villain who’s hunting for a lost satchel full of money. With a twisted sense of justice, he decides his victim’s fate with the flip of a coin.

Early in the film, Chigurh stops at a country filling station and engages an old clerk. He flips the coin and demands, “You need to call it. I can’t call it for you. It wouldn’t be fair.” Unaware of what’s really happening, the clerk says, “I didn’t put nothin’ up.”

Then Chigurh replies, “You’ve been putting it up your whole life. You just didn’t know it.”

You and I have been putting up our whole lives. We just didn’t know it.

Every day you and I get to decide our fates. When we think about the sum of our lives, it seems like something distant and undefined. We think of our lives as the result of a few important decisions we made along the way. And all too often, we keep putting off those choices until tomorrow.

But you’re not guaranteed tomorrow. You only have today. And what is your life but an accumulation of days? When today becomes yesterday, will you look back and be happy with the choices you’ve made?

You’re putting it up every day.

You’re putting it up every time you decide whether to be irritable with your wife, or show her love and patience (even when you don’t understand her).

You’re putting it up every time you decide whether to disengage with your kids and veg out on your phone, or put it away and give them your full attention.

You’re putting it up when you decide whether to sneak a fast food run, or put on your workout clothes and exercise.

You’re putting it up when you decide whether to “stop and chat” with the attractive woman at work, or to bypass an “innocent” relationship that cannot possibly end well.

You’re putting it up when you decide whether to friend your old flame on Facebook, or keep the home fires burning and let the past stay in the past.

You’re putting it up when you decide whether to make a reckless financial decision, or be smarter with your money.

You’re putting it up when you decide whether to set goals and work toward them every day, or sleepwalk through another year of your life.

I get it. Change is hard, and it’s much easier to settle. But time marches forward as days turn into weeks, weeks into months, months into years, and years into decades. Then all of sudden you wake up and realize you’re an old man with a treadworn heart and a closet full of regrets.

Don’t be the guy who puts his life on autopilot and never stretches, never reaches. You’re worth it. You’re family is worth is. You can do better.

Today is the day to make a fresh start. Today is the day to start building for the future. Today is the day when you look at where you are and realize it’s precisely where your choices have led you.

You’ve been putting it up your whole life. You just didn’t know it.

Where are you tempted to settle in life, and how are you challenging yourself to grow?