Why are we ashamed of effort? Or is this just me?
I was watching a video where this girl talks about preparing for a preaching. She was going to talk for about 35 minutes at a conference, and she prepared for it a whole year. First just by keeping it in the back of her mind, but later by starting the actual, practical preparation. She felt like she was supposed to talk about the Bible, which is kind of a big topic. So she spent hours researching, looking at different overviews and thinking about ways to put the whole story into her short teaching. She got up extra early, stayed up extra late, and fell asleep while reading. She preached the story for friends and family to get feedback before landing in the final product, the best way to express what she wanted to say.
And all I could think was: That’s a bit embarrassing. I wonder if the other speakers put in that much effort. And if I did that, I wonder if I would tell everyone I did, or if I’d say ”Ahh I just threw it together, it wasn’t that much work.”
It’s a bit of a subconscious thought pattern, but I was wondering why those thoughts do come up. Why do I feel some kind of second hand embarrassment over someone putting effort into something?
If I give someone a gift, I always act as if it’s not a big deal. As if it’s just a second hand thought. To make sure they don’t feel bad. But why, is that not just a bit rude?
And when doing things, I think my brain naturally plans according to me putting the least effort possible into something. “How quickly could I get this done?” I think it’s leftover thoughts from school, back when I needed to schedule homework and study for tests. “Okay, if I write that in three days, spend a week studying for that, and plan for that presentation the night before, I’ll have time for everything”. But it’s become a bad habit. And the problem is that when I’ve started to think like that, it’s difficult to put in more time than what I’ve calculated for something. If I have a task due in a month and know I could do it in three days, it’s not like I’m gonna do it right now.
It’s practical, to be able to evaluate approximately how much time something will take. But I was thinking, when listening to that woman talk about her preaching, that I should also spend a lot more time on things. When I can at least, and I usually can. And I should care more, or rather admit that I care. Always, so much. There are journalists who follow stories for years, painters who spend hours on the smallest little corner of a painting, people who spend weeks preparing for a dinner party that then passes and turns into a memory. I love that.
So, my thought for this new year (kind of new year, I’m not accepting that it’s almost February already) is this: Let’s care more. Let’s put months of preparation into small artworks, or speeches, or moments. Let’s be overly attentive, overly loving, more than trustworthy. Instead of thinking, how can I get this done in the fastest way possible, think: how can I get it done the slowest? What would that look like?
eirians 