Catholic Husband

Love / Lead / Serve

Compartmentalization Kills

If you are living a fragmented life, you’re cheating yourself.

In the 8
th grade, I watched the American Classic “To Kill A Mockingbird.” In the film, I will always remember the scene where Gregory Peck explains to his child how he cannot be one person at home and another at work.

Too many of us are like that. We’re trying to hold together two different lives. We do work that doesn’t line up with our personal values. We ignore our prayer life. We spend more time at the office than we do at home. We never exercise.

All of this compartmentalization is a sickness. We don’t give ourselves fully to anything, so we don’t live fully alive. We waste our weekends away watching TV or playing Xbox.

It is really all too much to handle. Managing those competing interests exhausts what little energy we have left. We need a shake-up.

The problem is that we are disorganized. We don’t know what tasks we need to accomplish, so we spend our time doing things that don’t matter. Then, at the end of the day, or the weekend, we are burnt out and didn’t really accomplish anything.

What we need are priorities. There is enough time in the day and the week to get done what we want to get done. It will just take some work. You must have a plan.

Sit down, and come up with your personal mission statement. Who are you and what are you trying to achieve?

The mission statement will give you clarity and clarity is what will give you your life back. You can have different personality styles, but you must have one mission. This clarity can make it easy for you to discern what you are meant to do, and what you are not meant to do.

A divided house cannot stand. Unite yours and go boldly into the unknown.