Not Doing It Right the First Time

I taught a calligraphy class last week, and several times the students compared their work to my own. I usually said some version of this statement, “THAT is what your letters look like after two hours of experience in holding the pen…I have a thirty-seven year head start, so PLEASE be patient with yourself! You’re doing great for someone who just picked up THAT pen.” It usually gets a chuckle and many giggles, a few deep breathes and then everyone calms down. I remind them that learning something new is a journey not often traveled by the faint of heart, so have courage and give yourself time to learn along the way.

Life is just that, a journey. One in which we get to choose what we want to keep, what to throw away, and HOW we want to become WHO we want to become. None of us came out of the box being who we are today. We had to learn, grown, make mistakes, endure the big, huge whopping flub ups, AND we had to continue to choose to put one foot in front of the other as we keep pressing onward. These words from Ursula Le Guin are a great reminder of all that:

It is good to have an end to journey toward; 
but it is the journey that matters in the end. 

- Ursula Le Guin 2018

No matter who we are or what we do, we all are journeying to become our best selves. Every time I teach I am reminded of how my decades of practice and work have honed my skills, my ‘eye’ and how I have become the artist and teacher I wanted to become. Strangely, it has only been recently that I have actually described myself an an artist and writer. Even though I have been creating for over thirty years, I haven’t really seen myself as a creative, just someone who is creative…not an actual creator. As I read that sentence back to myself out loud, I am dumbfounded. When friends make those kinds of statements I encourage them to see themselves as we see them, not just a person in process…even I have a challenge seeing myself as who I really am. Which tells me I still have a ways to go along my own journey of self discovery.

Let me encourage you to keep moving forward, keep putting one foot in front of the other. What you are doing today may only be fodder to be burned in the process of making you into your future self. The lessons and failures of today will become the fabulous stories you tell the people you encourage along your own journey. The goal is not to be perfect, no matter what the internet tells us. The goal is to enjoy the process, learn the lessons and give ourselves the joy and pain becoming brings to our door. For it is indeed the journey that matters after all, not doing it right the first time.