Tick Away All Day Long

The best thing about cliches is that they immediately evoke a response. They have a history that is, for the most part, instantly recognizable by most people, so cliches are useful. For example, “what makes you tick?” That’s a good one. It has literal connotations…like the ticking of a clock, a sure sign that the timepiece is functioning. Figuratively, it means the same thing, except that timepiece is you. What makes you function? What makes you tick?

There’s value in understanding the answer to that question. If you understand what truly gives you energy, what truly makes you feel alive, then you have something upon which to focus. It gives you a plan for how to fill your days. Why not fill you days with activities that give you life? At some point in our lives, we were lead to believe that life isn’t filled with such activities. Life-giving, energy-producing activities are the exception, not the norm. They are the things that happen to us on vacation or on the weekends. They are the things that we have to look forward to “tomorrow.” If we’re lucky, we get a taste, just enough energy to keep up moving along in what would otherwise be one big energy-suck-fest of a life.

OK, so maybe it’s not that bad, but the truth is that there are forces at work all around us that could otherwise lead us to believe that an unconscious life is what is in store for all of us. That seems a terrible message to teach my children. I would much rather they say me as a person who had life-giving, energy-filled days. To model that behavior, though, I have to actually live that way. Kinda hard if I don’t know what makes me tick.

So, that’s the quest: to understand what makes me tick and do my damnedest to fill my days with whatever that is. I’m not just talking about the smiles of my children or the companionship of my wife. I am talking about the things that come from deep within me that sing to my soul and make me, the individual, feel alive. They are activities and behaviors that are uniquely mine. If I can identify them, then I can take steps to make them a bigger part of my days.

Figure out what makes me tick, then tick away all day long. That sounds like a good idea to me.