For Those Who Often Miss The Mark
( And For Those Who are Afraid to Try)
I’m a big picture thinker. I love thinking about the future and the cosmos and what it all means. It’s a tendency I enjoy, as I am often swept up by ideas that, like the wind, transport me to places I’ve never been.
However, I am coming to understand how this tendency bites me in the ass, distracts, waylays and thwarts my efforts at finishing things, at coming to conclusions, at letting something be tentative, incomplete and discrete enough to be finished, at least for the moment.
To get something done, don’t try to “eat the elephant,” a metaphor I find distasteful, as the last thing I would ever want to do is eat an elephant even metaphorically, one bite at a time.
But I understand the metaphor: an elephant — any big idea — is made up of lots of smaller parts. If you are constantly focusing on the whole and how far you are from it, it’s easy to get discouraged and give up.
Which is what I do, or rather what fear prompts me to do: give up now, because even if you complete the project it cannot be half as good or comprehensive or captivating what you imagine possible in your dream of dreams.
It will inevitably be incomplete, and fear tells me disappointment is sure to follow. Better to quit now, not waste your time on something that will fallshort of the mark.
Why give other people proof of what you already know to be true: this, whatever it is, is a very bad idea.
This saboteur is well meaning and wants to save me from inevitable failure. She or he or they talk me out of taking action.
It’s like this: I admire archers, how they can aim and hit bullseye after bullseye, or so it seems. When I try, my arrow doesn’t go anywhere near the mark. Sometimes it hits the ground a few feet in front of me.
“See?” says my saboteur. “You’re embarrassing yourself and it’s a good thing no one is looking.
Why don’t you study archery? ( Fear is a good student, a rule follower) Really, break it down, study technique, take copious notes, so that the next time you will surely you will hit a bullseye, or at least the board.
And that’s what I do: I make myself an expert in archery without ever picking up a bow or arrow.
Except the theory of anything based upon principles and underlying structures cannot be reverse-engineered, especially in art.
The aim of what you set out to do changes. That’s how experience teaches you what you are capable of and also what’s possible to aim for.
If we only arrive at the destination we’ve planned for, we haven’t really left home. If we follow our itinerary to the letter. Our adventures are tame and predictable.
There’s a story I heard about a Master Archer who heard tell of another Master Archer who always hit a bullseye every time without exception. The Master Archer’s aim was very excellent because he had spent of his life practicing. But even he occasionally missed.
The Master Archer set out to meet his rival and was shocked to discover a small girl.
How could this child, without practice or effort or training, how could she possibly hit a bullseye every time?
“It’s easy,” she told the Master Archer. “I aim, pull back my bow and let it go. Wherever the arrow lands, I draw a circle around it.”
Both the Master Archer and the little girl learn from experience.
But the point of the game is different.
For the little girl, missing the mark or hitting a bullseye is a part of the game. That’s not what makes it worth playing.
Showing up and continuing to aim is the point.
Celebrating whatever mark you hit is the point.
Joy is the playing of the game is point.
Joy carries the arrow into flight and towards a point of contact, which is what all marks, goals, and bullseyes are: a point of contact, a temporary arrival on a journey .
The starting point is always showing up.
Your intention may be fraught with fear of failure or animated by joy of discovery.
I suspect that enthusiasm in the trying and celebration of whatever you are able to do, however close or far it is from the mark, will carry you, and your arrows closer and also farther than you intended or could have ever imagined.
That’s what I’m telling myself for today.
