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:
Worldliness
Restlessness in Abundance
Already in 1840, Alexis de Tocqueville discovered and diagnosed in Americans the fear of missing out or, as it is now called – FOMO.
In Volume III of Democracy in America, Tocqueville juxtaposes Americans with those in the Old World who “are very ignorant and very wretched; they are not involved in governmental affairs and often governments oppress them. But they usually show a serene face, and they often exhibit a cheerful mood.”
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DYING TO MEET YOU 