Repetition & Fog

I tell myself a story each day: it’s the story of being enough. And I need to hear it over and over. Especially now - during this time of overextension - when the shortfalls are so glaring.

Somewhere in this telling, though, I got a detail wrong. A detail about self-discipline.

I told myself that people practice their craft: their music; their sport; their chess game. The ones who match exceptional talent with exceptional discipline become Madonna; Michael Jordan; Bobby Fischer.

They pull from their inner-well, from this intrinsic characteristic: discipline.

And good for them. (The world doesn’t need or expect me to be Michael Jordan!)

The detail I got wrong was discipline, that they’re able to practice their craft because they have discipline.

They — anyone who becomes proficient (or excellent) at something— acquires discipline through practice.

I think I knew this, but buried it somewhere. And then, like all lessons that I need to re-learn, it came at me - with force - from several directions.

The Ain home is not one where we need to go on a hunt for meaning: metaphors come crashing at us: One of us wakes up in the night a few years ago saying the word “mishkan” (tabernacle) and the other has a vision of a flight to California.

A therapist once told me that I was searching too much for a narrative thread in my dreams. I have a new therapist now.

So last week when the convergence of the Torah portion about the Jewish calendar (structure!) collided with the daily counting of the Omer (discipline!) and a conversation with a musician about her daily practice (structure & discipline!) collided, I was not surprised.

I stepped outside to breathe in a truth.

It was almost Shabbat, just before nightfall. And the fog was dancing over the tall Cyprus trees, skimming through their dark branches.

The fog surprised me when I got here - not its presence (we were warned we’d be moving into the literal thick of it).

I was surprised by how much I loved it: its speed; its beauty. It was much quicker and more elegant than I had imagined.

The fog was not something that I felt stuck in, but rather moved by.

A consolation, for sure, to have its cool mist pass over me while I took in the pain but also solace that discipline is something I can still practice.

Something that I can practice while never being Michael Jordan, while accepting the gifts of narrative threads in my dreams and my surroundings, while showing up for daily repetitions — while being enough each day — over and over and over again.