I'm thinking of going back to school to get a degree in history -- all history. That's probably not the best plan, since if you're going to post-post-post graduate study, you ought to narrow things down a bit more.

But I'm convinced we need to study how things have been done in the past to gain some perspective on the crazy way we do things now.

Work takes work. I'm convinced a study of any past major accomplishement will reveal that the acheivement was a pain in the butt. We all know about the light bulb story and Edison's take on mistakes, but then we go right on behaving as if this whole innovation and good idea stuff is just-oh-squeeze-it-out-one-errrr-consultant-uhhhh-away.

If we can just plug the right "solution" into our problem, we'll have this thing fixed in an hour.

I'm not against optimist. Heck, I couldn't get out of bed in the morning if I didn't believe something good might happen to me that day. But I'm against the tendency in today's world -- work day, personal life, choose your sector -- to believe that life ought to be easy.

It's dangerous nostalgia to think that things were ever better than they are right now. Solving problems, creating innovation, moving forward . . . it all took work. Sometimes it was incredibly painful work. Sometimes, people refused to do the work and generations of their progeny suffered because of the communication dynamic they put into play.

Right now is the best time in history. And I mean right now in the literal sense, not in the sense of "this era." The moment you are living in as you read this is the best moment ever, because you can act within that moment. That moment is reality.

You can plan in the future, you can regret in the past, but you can only act in this moment, right now.

We get into trouble when we allow our inner child to take charge of the facilities questions. The childish part of us thinks we ought not have to work. There ought to be a way to routininze or normalize every process so that its predictable, and most importantly, that everything happens when it's supposed to.

Sure, shoot for that. Give it your best shot to see if you can create the perfect system, the perfect work team, the perfect family dynamic. But you know what, people will get in the way. Damn those people!

I used to work with a human resources consultant who's favorite saying was: If we could do this job without people, we would. Sometimes I think the rest of the world doesn't know she was joking.

People -- no matter how well trained -- will have personality clashes, unrealistic expectations for themselves or others, sick days, uncertainty, vulnerability, weakness. They always have.

This weekend I was talking with some elders at my church about a ministry we support for families of children facing critical illnesses. One elder mentioned that this ministry "just came out of no where." His point was that God made it easy for us, and we jumped at the opportunity. I happened to know how the ministry came to our church, and it didn't just land in our laps and the elders at the time wrestled significantly over whether to incorporate the ministry into our church or not. In fact, the plan was to support it as a start up and then spin it off within a few years, but ten years later it remains a vibrant and beloved part of the church.

Also at my church, we're going through a search for a new pastor. As an elder, I don't know any more about the process than anyone who's not on the pastor nominating committee, and they don't know much more than the rest of us. Since I wasn't here when we called the current, much beloved pastor, I just assumed that God would lead us unnerringly to the next man or woman who is to lead us. I met a woman today who mentioned that her father was on the nominating committee for our current pastor, and she remembers what a difficult time it was for the congregation, and how anxious we all were.

Time and again in my life I face struggle and only find comfort in remembering the times I'd overcome pain in the past. It's not the kind of thing you want to get good at (surviving trauma!) but since the world is filled with all sorts of challenges and surprises, it's better to be a survivor than not.

I feel at my most lost when I forget to revisit the past difficulties. I am not dwelling, but neither do I try to forget the troubles and challenges I've faced. The trick is to use them as part of the arsenal to overcome the next challenge.

Going to sleep now! Write more later . . .