WHY BOTHER?

I make the bed just about every morning before I leave the house for work these days. I straighten the pillows, pull the sheet and comforter tight against the headboard, and put the three decorative pillows into place. It's one of my fairly recent morning habits but I have been doing it long enough that it has already become fairly automatic. 

Somehow this habit came up in conversation with a student the other day and he asked the obvious question: "Why bother?"

"It's just going to get messy again, right?"

I didn't have a snappy answer for him in that moment, but upon reflection, here's my answer: "I make the bed each morning because I want to be the kind of person who has the eyes to see any opportunity -big or small - to bring order out of disorder. And then acts to do it."

If you think about it, "why bother?" could be asked about any good habit. And the answer would always start the same way: "Because I want to be the kind of person who . . .".