You patched it years ago. Temporarily.
The thing you do at 5 a.m. so the day doesn't start on top of you. The second coffee that is really a third. The radio up loud enough on the drive home that nothing can get a word in. The one hobby you kept because it fits in a phone.
None of it was the plan. Every piece went in as a patch. Just until things settle down.
A man put the whole system in one line. He said he'd been holding the stress together with tape and paper clips for years.
Years.
Read that word again, then read the two before it. Tape is what you use when you'll be back tomorrow with the real part. Nobody was coming back.
That's the trick of a patch that works. It never fails loud enough to get replaced. It just quietly becomes the thing holding you up.
At some point you stopped being a person having a hard stretch and became the guy who keeps the tape from peeling.
The one thing:
Find the oldest piece of tape. The thing you started doing for now that now has an anniversary.
Don't rip it off. Just say, to yourself, what it was covering. You'll know how long it's been by how fast the answer comes.
Josh
P.S. I finished my 30-day Ash Journal run on July 30. In public, one page a day, no edits, all thirty.
Five minutes. One prompt. One line of ash. The first seven days are free: truevitalyou.com/journal