I walk everywhere. I do not drive, given I live somewhere public transportation serves the community. I might have my license already, a car too, if this environment required it. I cannot make my city a more drivable one, less traffic and fewer drivers on the road. Yet, I can do whatever I wish to myself, to change, to improve.
This thinking follows me like a shadow, the idea I can improve. I could get over a fear of new things to drive, edit videos, maintain a Twitter account or trade digital assets. The reason I stop, the reason most people do: walking thru the Valley of Disappointment is difficult.
Warren Buffet says, "That's how knowledge works. It builds up like compound interest."
Progress isn't like a movie. A two minute montage of clips- running up steps, doing crunches, blending whole eggs to drink- bears no weight on your training regimen. Yet, we like the movies, their glamour, their closure.
Progress is an ice cube. Frozen, impassive. On the surface, "he looks calm and ready". Even at the atomic level, molecules remain somewhat static. Yet, habits are the degrees of temperature by which the cube changes. At a point, we exceed the cube's tolerance and it gives at thirty-two degrees, it melts a drop. Then, sweats. Then, it perspires right into a pool.
That image of linear progress? You walk across the plateau, The Plateau of Latent Potential. The area between non-linear progress and idealized, linear improvement forms a punishing valley. The Valley of Disappointment finds many travelers despondent. Desperate for the desired outcome, but weary from what seems to be aimless wandering, good habits stop here, before they even get going.
This month's challenge was a guide, map and compass straight past the disappointment. That doesn't mean it was easy. I worked 11 hours one night. I soaked my weary feet with epsom salt, more like scalded while attempting to soak. I still wrote my thoughts, thanks to wonderful insights from that book by James Clear, Atomic Habits.
I fell in love with the journey, forgot how many steps it took.
Such is Ithaka. Could heaven ever be like this? Maybe the One Piece was not the treasure, but the...
Ithaka, written by C.P Carafy, is often read as an elegy. I am of the mind it isn't a poem about endings, though. For me, I feel ever blooming beginnings, on a journey that ends eventually, but feels as though it's set right up again at the start.
"As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one
full of adventure, full of discovery."
He repeats, "Hope your road is a long one."
As you set out for change, hope your process is a long one. Why? Well, to me, I haven't behaved much out of character. I still play games a lot, hesitate to start work, run late to the train. Yet, reflections on my items, they've blinked past. The challenge ends with the topic of my iPad, yet I don't want it to. My mind's clear enough to keep good ideas in tow til' I find paper for them. My space is clean and clear enough to write free of distraction. I have friends who kick me from the party to focus and want to read my loquacious thought. I spent days agonizing about what to write, that is, until now. I want to write about almost everything.
I leave you with this anecdote. In high school, the history class taught by Teacher of the Year award recipient, Dr. Shea fostered my love of learning. Boisterous and beloved, Dr. Shea wasn't always a doctor. He brought an enthusiasm to each day of class with a few claps and a snap, strutting about the room, tattling on his kids and bantering about golf. Such was his good humor, he shone as he commented on his equally brilliant, bald head. He pioneered the iPad pilot program at our high school. It was a regular, degular CP (college preparatory) history course, but he enabled us with technology. Apt since students my age had Gameboys to iPhone's first model, Macbooks and money. I remember my frustration when some students (in his other class) got caught off task on the devices, in class. The constant refocusing prompted restrictions on our devices. I won't forget what he wanted for us. His aim for us was to become critical thinkers, ones who could use resources to come to their own conclusions. That's all he wanted. That and maybe some hair growth.