Living with Intentionality

Suppose we are interested in learning a new language. My son took an interest in Russian after we had gone to the Spy Museum in Washington one summer. Because of my interest in French literature, I took an interest in learning French. One thing you quickly learn with languages like French or Russian—and I suspect Chinese or Navajo—is that you do not just “pick it up.” One must make a deliberate decision and make a commitment to the task. You decide, Yes, I will take whatever steps are necessary to achieve this goal.

There is vocabulary to acquire, grammar to wrestle with, awkward mistakes to endure, and long stretches where progress feels painfully slow. There are moments when you wonder why you ever started. Fluency comes, if it comes at all, through patience, repetition, correction, and persistence. No shortcut replaces the work.

In its essence, achieving a goal like this requires (a) the decision to do so, (b) finding a mentor who can help us move from square one toward real facility, and (c) following through on each step along the way—even when enthusiasm fades.

Dallas Willard, in his book Renovation of the Heart, uses this process of learning a language as a metaphor for character development. It requires intentionality first. Do we actually want to become better people? Growth of this sort does not “just happen.” Habits, virtues, patience, courage—these are learned disciplines, not accidents.

Life is an ocean. If you are a ship in London and want to reach New York, it will be a very long time before you arrive if you simply drift—if you arrive at all. Currents may carry you somewhere, but not necessarily where you hoped to go. Tragically, many people live precisely this way: reacting, drifting, adapting, but rarely choosing.

Low aims produce small lives. No aim at all produces fragmentation.

Where are you going with your life? What kind of goals do you have for your own personal development—not just professionally, but morally and spiritually? As Ralph D. Winter once said, “Risks are not to be evaluated in terms of the probability of success, but in terms of the value of the goal.”

Some goals are worth pursuing even if they take years, even if they cost us comfort, even if progress is uneven. Character is one of those goals.

Keep pressing on. Purposefully.