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You’ll never be perfect, but perfection isn’t a prerequisite to effort mattering
Do what nature now requires. Set yourself in motion, if it is in your power, and do not look round to see if any one will observe it; nor yet look for Plato's Republic: but be content if the smallest thing goes well, and consider such an event no small matter.
All or nothing thinking is a scourge. One of the most famous, or I should say infamous, example of all or nothing thinking is one you’ve probably heard before.
“What’s the point of life? If we’re going to die anyway, what does it matter?”
Seems deep, maybe? Well it’s not. And it’s based on an asinine premise, which is: that in order for a person’s life to matter, that person has to be immortal (for their mattering to endure) — or, in fact, that all of humanity has to be immortal (for the impact of mattering to endure infinitely, thus allowing things to matter at all). Which is, of course, idiotic. We need not matter forever in order to matter at all.
You might be tempted to suggest that, “I agree that it is idiotic, but thankfully nobody actually lives that way!”
To which I would suggest you pump your brakes, get out of the car, and look into a mirror because YOU, good sir or madam, live like this frequently.
I won’t list what I’m sure would be the dozens of examples that occur weekly for any of us, I’ll just name three:
"I already ate a doughnut, so it doesn't matter now. I might as well order pizza tonight."
"I got a C on this paper, so it doesn't matter now. There's no point trying for an A in the class."
"I skipped the gym today, so it doesn't matter anymore. I may as well skip the rest of the week"
We don’t need to eat perfectly in order for eating well to matter a great deal. We don’t need to get a 100/100 in the class in order to make passing the class matter. We don’t need to be relentlessly consistent to make any level of consistency matter.
Or how about this one?: we don’t need to achieve sagehood in order for our progress as prokoptôns to matter.
Well then, I guess you can unsubscribe and stop working on improving yourself. Right? I guess you can just judge this life of yours un-mattering and thus useless, stop paying your bills, stop having friends, stop contributing to the whole, move into a bush, never eat again, and wait for death to take you. Right?
Here’s what I’d like you to do this week as often as you can remember to do it
Stop doing what you’re doing, whatever it is, and spend a minute or three answering the question: “how does this matter now, and to whom does it matter?” And don’t be glib and dramatic about it when you do it. If you remember to do it while sitting at your desk at work, don’t say, “Ugh, this matters to my greedy corporate overlords who will make money at the expense of my enslavement to the cubicle strata of existence! I’m being repressed!”
Help help! I’m being repressed!
Instead think, “This matters to the person who depends on the outcome. It matters to the people I've agreed to work alongside. It matters because I freely accepted this role and the duties that come with it. And it matters to me because this is an opportunity to exercise my character! To be attentive, reliable, patient, and just.”
Let me know how it goes.
Stay hungry. Stay wise. Eat brekkie.
