Sometimes your worst will do and your most abhorrent effort is good enough. That’s because giving up and not following through is far worse. You can’t edit an unwritten page. You cannot season un unprepared dish, as much as you can’t fix an untried finger technique while trying to grapple with the unknown complexities of a challenging musical instrument.
Sometimes your very worst will do because done is better than good.
I always have to clarify this because it is easy to misunderstand what I am saying. I am not suggesting that it doesn’t matter to put your best effort forward or to begin things before being confident in their success. What I am saying is that the problem with a lot of our unrealized dreams is not that we failed but that we gave up way too soon and never finished.
This piece of writing was supposed to be written early this morning. That is the usual pattern, but this is not a usual week. This is March Break, and besides being thrust on a mini Polish-Canadian Hip Hop tour to New York and Chicago, I am knee deep into March Break and enjoying the carefree time and unrelenting waves of attention from my children.
A few minutes ago I had a decision to make. It’s 8:30 pm, or for those Europeans or military personnel reading this out there; precisely 20:30 hours. What I wanted to do and what I am doing are two different things fuelled by two different visions. What I wanted to do was to simply get to tomorrow and roll this day into everything else. After all, what great thing could I possibly write about. But I know better now. I know that a step in the right direction leads to more steps in the same direction and a step in the wrong direction leads to more steps, and the climb up is a lot tougher, than the run down.
So here I am writing whatever I can with whatever time I have to simply say that I did what I decided to do some two years ago.
I want to be done because I don’t want to make a liar out of that person who had a dream of being a writer. I don’t want that dream to die, because this person, living right now has the same dream, and rushed or hap hazard words are still better than words never written at all, or notes that never get played.
I don’t care what foot you think you are putting forward. Just put it forward and welcome tomorrow with open heart. This may prove to be nothing at all, or it may prove to be the foundation of many glorious things to come. You just don’t know, and so you should play with your future by neglecting your present, or looking too far back into your past.
Get at something, even if it’s in the last few minutes before you close your eyes and go to bed. Life is precious. You are precious too. Sometimes your worst will do, and your worst may not be what you perceive it to be.
Cover photo generously provided by photographer John Cameron.
https://unsplash.com/@john_cameron
