Tonight I am remembering the oft-cited G.K. Chesterton quotation, “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”
It is seems to me that some of the things I find particularly worth doing and so that remain worth doing, even badly, are: studying new languages, attempting new skills, and learning more about cultural and religious traditions.
In the clip above, I was on a coffee plantation tour in Mexico when I stopped to attempt to make tortillas.
As you can see, it went rather badly.
As you can also see, I was smiling quite a lot and found it worth doing.
What is it about certain things that make them worthwhile even if we are not excellent at them?
In one of his letters, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote:
Coffee
Saved by Hope
This morning a friend of mine and I entered a Starbucks drive-thru. As my friend rolled down the window, we felt a cool morning gust. A young woman’s voice came from the speaker saying, with what may have been the greatest excitement I have heard from anyone throughout the entirety of the pandemic, “Welcome to Starbucks! What can I get for you this morning?”
My friend and I glanced at each other. The woman had sounded completely genuine. It wasn’t a phoney greeting. Yet, the enthusiasm startled us.
“You’re really happy,” my friend acknowledged.
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DYING TO MEET YOU 