My wife once read a few stories I had written and asked why I never tried to publish them or work on my writing. And I think the reason I gave her is the same reason a lot of us don’t do things we should. We get discouraged. I never worked on my writing because when I wrote a paragraph, I’d return to it and realize that my writing was never going to be on par with Hemingway or Tolstoy, so I stopped trying.
When you start get into shape, the number one bit of advice is to go slow. To take it easy and not overreach. If your goal is to run 5 miles don’t even think about it. Instead, start with something manageable. Try to sprint 50 feet. Most people quit working out when they fail to meet thier goal early on and get fed up.
One of my early temptations is to get too big. I’ll make the commitment to start doing some good works. Immediately I begin to fantasize about starting my own personal catholic worker movement. When I come back to reality I realize that’s not going to happen like that and before I even begin to do something I’m discouraged. Does anyone else have this experience?
I think we’re so conditioned for success, big success, that we see small triumphs and failures as something that must be avoided. Often times it’s that fear of failure, or just fear of not being fantastic, that prevents us from even trying to be at all. ‘Go Big or Go Home.” as the T-shirt says.
There is a great line from Fight Club that puts it a different way. “We’ve all been raised by television to believe that we’d be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars – but we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed-off.”
I think that faith is more failure than success. It’s more small than big. I think this is one of part of the contradictory foolishness of God that we have to contemplate.
Mother Teresa once said ‘There are no great deeds, only small deeds done in great love.” I need to stop worrying about not being able to do ‘great things’ and worry about doing something, anything, with love. Without love even the biggest achievements are ultimately meaningless and with love the smallest victories can conquer death itself.
This year, if I’m going to do anything, I’ve got to remember to keep it simple, keep it small, and keep love at the center of it. So I’m going to start by going to orientation at Loaves and Fishes. After that I’m going to help out around the soup kitchen as much as I can. We’ll see what happens after that.
