8 December 2025, Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception
Begins with a single step. We've all heard this saying a thousand times. Yet there's another saying that I find even more useful in our modern times. It staves off the fear of missing out (though we may be human with our psychologies being exploited for profit), from the thief of joy that is comparison.
The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The next-best time to plant a tree is today.
I find myself longing to have done something or started a hobby earlier so I could be better at it. This way of thinking feels symptomatic of our culturally ingrained positive bias towards the extraordinary skill of practitioners. No one goes viral on TikTok or Youtube or whatever when they are first starting to practice a skill (unless they are gifted in ...other ways). We are conditioned (and at this point, certainly subconsciously) to adore and to compare ourselves to those who have extraordinary skill. This seems to have been far more than just *old man yells at cloud meme.jpg* about social media. Even in the era of TV, and I speculate even in the era of radio and newspaper the extraordinary was lauded. That seems only natural to us; no one would watch Aunt Nelly try to bake a cake for the first time in fifty years. Yet this has the [un?]intended consequence of imputing subliminal guilt to those of weak will, to those masses of which I am included, to those who feel the pressure of comparison.
Let us revel in the mediocre. Let us sing wobbly notes, let us paint crooked lines with muddled colors, let us run slow miles and step wrong or slightly out of time and write good (but not too well), not with the intention of never improving; rather, with the joy that comes from performing whatever act you are practicing.
I will not lie and say that I never fall pray to this. I, even tonight, look jealously on the black belts in my karate class! But I believe I am walking on the right path, the path of improvement rather than of jealous stagnation.
Let us now return to our aphorism: someone who planted their tree twenty years ago will have a tree with beautiful branches. Yet it does not diminish the noble simplicity of the sprout which sees all the same harshness that the tree sees without bark and branch to weather it.
Now it is rare to chill and think. I would be satisfied with a job that let me think without interruption and that I could contemplate the mysteries of the universe and life and all that. Lately I have been rushing around, from work to home to meeting friends to going to Mass to other commitments and all that. It seems tautological with regards to my previous articles! But I have been so busy. So busy. Each moment of peace, of freedom is bliss. They are all too fleeting and far between.
I will have to discuss this in a later post.