What does "follow" mean?

Today my reading in the prayer challenge book is about abiding.  He writes a lot about abiding in the word of God.
A few things I underlined:
"Come follow me...meant taking the Rabbi's yoke...the yoke represented the sum total of the Rabbi's philosophy and practice.  It meant spending every waking moment with him."
If we are disciples of Jesus, that means we "follow" him.  It means we take on the total of Jesus' philosophy and practice-spending every waking hour with him.
But, we want to just take a quick glance at his life - maybe on a Sunday when someone teaches from the bible.  Maybe a quick bible verse or chapter here and there.
And we want to ask him to follow us....so we can turn around and check in whenever it's convenient and we want to blame him when prayers aren't answered or life sucks.
But, all the while, we aren't following him.  Because, it costs us everything.  We have to let go of our life and surrender.  We don't want to do that.  That's radical.  Crazy really.
So, we call ourselves disciples, followers, believers...but do we even know what that means?
We look at Jesus' life, maybe read the gospels that show us his "philosophy and practice" while living among us.  And we marvel at the way he lived!  We marvel at the way he upended the religious and led a revolution of selfless grace and compassion.  He was so beautiful.  Love in the flesh.
But he was radical!
So we may marvel, but we don't really follow.
He didn't have a home or possessions.  He didn't have a wife and kids, a stable job with a plan for retirement and college savings plans.  He didn't justify ANY violence, but instead said "love your enemies".  He forgave his enemies while he was being tortured to death. He didn't spend any time with people in powerful, influential positions, but he was always with the people who were considered lower, less than, unworthy, unimportant, not powerful.  He wasn't trying to convince the government to change, but was starting a grass roots revolution of radical love that was founded on putting others before himself.  A servant expecting nothing in return.
We marvel at this.
Wow, Jesus was amazing!
But we don't really follow.
If follow means "taking on the total of Jesus' philosophy and practice", then we usually find ourselves learning from, admiring, and pondering - but rarely actually following.
Yet, we know that our joy can be complete if we follow.  But, it's too hard.  We have too much we do not want to surrender and let go of.
I guess what's weird is that we don't surrender and follow, but we hold on to our own plans, our idols, and our fear.  But then we wonder why Jesus isn't rescuing us, or we say "I don't hear from God - that just happened back in the time the bible was written." Or we blame God for everything.  Yet, do we even know him? Do we know His character?  Have we trusted His goodness?  Or have we tried to learn a little bit from Jesus' life, all the while holding on tightly to our own?