Keep going
A pep talk (for myself and whoever else needs to hear it)
Years ago, as part of a university assignment, My sister Z invented a theory on the different kinds of patience.
When people talked about patience, she theorized, they’re usually talking about passive patience. The sucking it up and waiting. The having to deal with a bad situation.
But there was another kind of patience too. Active patience, where you saw something you wanted to change and worked diligently to change it, all the while coping with the current situation. Z was good, is good, at active patience. She is a maker of plans, a doer of hard things. An organizer, a recruiter, a builder. Z wants community and she looks for it diligently until she finds it. And if she doesn’t find it, she makes it.
Last week, I got some feedback on a writing project I have been tackling very slowly. The feedback was devastating—an indictment of everything I had done so far—or at least, that was how I took it. And then, with the salve of time, and the patience and support of my writer friends—you know who you are!—I realized the feedback was a nudge. You’re on to something, you’re just not all the way there yet. Keep going.
I’ve never been very good at keep going.
When I was little, Mama used to call me Miqdama. A person who rushes into things, headfirst, without thinking. This is how I ended up in a tangled heap with my bicycle at the bottom of the steepest hill in our neighbourhood, mere weeks after my training wheels had been removed and a scar on my arm that I still have to this day. This is how I ended up with stitches on my chin and more stitches on my forehead. Rushing headlong into life, consequences be damned.
I’m great at starting things, and then starting more things. And I’m great at finishing them, or rather leaving them unfinished and abandoned.
But that messy middle? I’m pretty rotten at that messy middle. This, I think, is why I make brownies instead of delicate, complicated pastries. Who has the patience? This is why I book physio appointments at the last minute, when my muscles are throbbing and I can’t turn my neck more than 30 degrees in any direction, instead of scheduling monthly tune-ups.
I set goals and then I imagine getting them done in a series of linear tasks, one after the other. But real life isn’t linear. Real life is moving forward and stopping and starting and going in circles a million times and spinning around until you’re dizzy and then moving forward a little more and then maybe, (maybe!) getting to the finish line.
I’m 43, and I’m just now realizing that I do better with passive patience, but passive patience isn’t always enough. Time will solve it, I tell myself, when all time will do is keep passing if I don’t get up do the work to solve it myself.
So now I have to keep going. I have to roll up my sleeves and get deep into the messy middle. I have to trust the process and enjoy the journey and all those horrible cliches they use in car commercials. Everything worth doing is hard. And I’ve decided that this is worth doing.
Let’s go.
Tell me:
How do you do with long, complicated projects? Do you have tips for staying motivated in the messy middle?
Are you stronger in passive patience or active patience?
When you’ve slogged through a few messy middles, you come to realize they’re part of the process. Norman Raeben, a painter and art teacher whose students included Bob Dylan, followed 10 commandments of art and posted them in his studio. I particularly like “If it is not difficult it is not worthwhile” (you have this one, worded a little differently) and
“You must feel completely discouraged before you can progress.” Also “Don’t be an art critic before you’re an artist.”
If I'm doing sth that's interesting for me, I finish it, but when sth is boring, I leave it in the middle and never finish it (In other words, I must know the value of sth before starting to do it). And about patience, it depends on the situation. If I can do other stuff beside waiting for the result of a previous action, then I wait actively (in the background) and continue doing my other things. If not, then I wait passively (Like when I work on some of my artworks).