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Practising perfection, a piece from KA ...
There’s a book out there that says if you do anything for 10,000 hours, you’ll perfect the skill. My neighbour has recently bought a drum. I can hear him practising every evening. It’s not an entire drum kit (phew) – it sounds like a djembe. Over the past two weeks, I can hear he’s become more proficient and I find myself egging him on a little, wondering if he’ll eventually join a drum café group.
So, I was thinking about perfecting things and then got to wondering why we’re so bad at relationships and communication and emotional stuff. I came to the conclusion that it’s because we’re messy. If you’re striving to perfect a surgical procedure, for example, you probably go through a whole range of things that can go wrong, but eventually, you’ll come to a point where you’ve experienced all the nuances and have learned from them. That’s when you perfect your skill.
It’s interesting that people are called ‘practising’ Christians, doctors, architects and so on (although, they may be called practicing, which means they’ve put into being what they know – but that doesn’t quite express my point, so we’ll go with the word I want). It’s because there are so many variables that you never quite get to a point of perfection. Relationships are particularly fraught with dangers, valleys and possible pitfalls. And I mean that in the nicest possible way. It’s because we are constantly growing and learning. Imagine if we never changed, never learned or were never influenced? What a boring bunch we’d be! We do learn about each other in relationships – we learn never to use ‘that’ tone with a certain person, or that so and so hates to speak about that subject. And so it goes.
But what about change? We know about that – look at children who love eating one thing for about a year and then abruptly refuse to eat it ever again. What’s that about? We can change. We can change fundamentally, slightly, dramatically or subtly. We can change overnight or over years. We can be influenced slowly or suddenly see the light. And then we are different. Humans are always in flux.
And so our relationships are always moving. We love and hate, adore or berate according to who we are today. We make decisions on who we were yesterday and who we hope to be tomorrow. It’s the same with our relationship with our Saviour. I remember an evangelist saying, ‘If you feel far from God, guess who moved’. It’s a quirky saying, but so true nonetheless. You see, the one constant we can always rely on and trust in and just know, is that He is the same always. He is, was and always will be. So, if your relationship is on a shifting field, it’s because you’re shifting and changing. That’s not a bad thing, though – it means you’re alive and are soaking up all the information around you. All of that shapes who you are. And who you are is perfect. You didn’t see that coming did you?
Well, you are. Because our Lord said so. And He is never wrong and He never does anything that’s not complete and perfect (even if we can’t see that all the time). So I pray you spend more time practising and less time perfecting. I pray you enjoy the adventure of a journey filled with potholes and picnics.
Practising perfection, a piece from KA ...
There’s a book out there that says if you do anything for 10,000 hours, you’ll perfect the skill. My neighbour has recently bought a drum. I can hear him practising every evening. It’s not an entire drum kit (phew) – it sounds like a djembe. Over the past two weeks, I can hear he’s become more proficient and I find myself egging him on a little, wondering if he’ll eventually join a drum café group.So, I was thinking about perfecting things and then got to wondering why we’re so bad at relationships and communication and emotional stuff. I came to the conclusion that it’s because we’re messy. If you’re striving to perfect a surgical procedure, for example, you probably go through a whole range of things that can go wrong, but eventually, you’ll come to a point where you’ve experienced all the nuances and have learned from them. That’s when you perfect your skill.
It’s interesting that people are called ‘practising’ Christians, doctors, architects and so on (although, they may be called practicing, which means they’ve put into being what they know – but that doesn’t quite express my point, so we’ll go with the word I want). It’s because there are so many variables that you never quite get to a point of perfection. Relationships are particularly fraught with dangers, valleys and possible pitfalls. And I mean that in the nicest possible way. It’s because we are constantly growing and learning. Imagine if we never changed, never learned or were never influenced? What a boring bunch we’d be! We do learn about each other in relationships – we learn never to use ‘that’ tone with a certain person, or that so and so hates to speak about that subject. And so it goes.
But what about change? We know about that – look at children who love eating one thing for about a year and then abruptly refuse to eat it ever again. What’s that about? We can change. We can change fundamentally, slightly, dramatically or subtly. We can change overnight or over years. We can be influenced slowly or suddenly see the light. And then we are different. Humans are always in flux.
Well, you are. Because our Lord said so. And He is never wrong and He never does anything that’s not complete and perfect (even if we can’t see that all the time). So I pray you spend more time practising and less time perfecting. I pray you enjoy the adventure of a journey filled with potholes and picnics.
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