THE LACK OF WILL

Victor Marie Hugo, the French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic Movement, once observed that “People do not lack strength. They lack will.”  He was correct. We all have various abilities to do many and varied and wonderful things. Those abilities are our strengths. There are, of course, many actions that are out of our reach because we lack the ability to do them. No one is able to do everything.

What is incumbent upon each one of us is, first, to discover just what those talents, gifts, abilities are. Then, second, we are to develop them as best we can as we grow. For whatever reason there may be, many, many of us do not realize just how talented we are, just how gifted we are in one way or another. As a result, the world loses what we can offer to make this world a better place.

The other side of the coin is that even when we have learned what those gifts are with which God has endowed us, we lack, as Hugo observed, the will to develop them to the very best of our abilities. We have within us the strength to do so. For God does not give us any gift without giving us the strength to make that gift the best it can be. It is up to us to determine to use that strength to make it happen.

Yet, again, it won’t happen if we do not want it to happen, if we lack the will to do what is necessary. We all know very talented athletes, musicians, scholars – the list is endless -- who lack the will do put in the effort to develop that talent to its utmost. We may call them lazy and they probably are. But laziness is the result of one being unwilling to make the effort to do what needs to be done.

Often, of course, we are simply satisfied with the way things are. We claim that the manner in which we are using our talents is good enough. We’re a good enough athlete or teacher or parent or whatever, so what is the problem, we wonder, maybe even ask those who may be criticizing us for our lack of effort to be better. But good enough is not enough if we can truly be better. The strength to do so lies within. But it takes will power to engage that strength.

We know all this. It is not rocket science because we have observed it up close and personal. What parent has not told a child “you can better”? Which one of us has not been told the same? Which one of us – parent, child, employee, whomever – does not know this to be true, does not have to admit that we could do better if we really wanted to do so but at the present moment simply lack the will?

This world, our life, could be so much better if willed it to be so, if we used the gifts we have been given to the best of our ability, if we admitted that it was not for lack of strength that we have not done so but for the lack of will? So what is keeping us from being willing to be at it?