practice
How many of the things you’re learning now are you going to use on other people? Do you remember your first flirting attempt? The first time you tied a tie on a man? The first time you try out what will end up being your signature move?
How many instances or people in our life are just practice? Practice for the right thing? The right person?
It’s a hard thing to think about. That you may just be practice for someone else. Maybe they’re learning how to dance. How to communicate. How to love.
Life lately
I’ve had a few job interviews lately and have had to ponder the age old question; what are my weaknesses? After mulling over the question for days, I finally came up with an answer. I don’t know how to ask for help. Now, clever as ever, this answer was just a sly way for me to work in my habit of seeking challenges, a habit I hope will make me more attractive to employers. I had to think though, this love for challenges, a puzzle, a mystery, leads me to the unknown very often. A never-ending process of figuring out new people, environments, and cultures ultimately just means that I am often a duck out of water, lost. That doesn’t pair very well with not knowing how to ask for help now does it?
I’ve always hated asking for help. It made me feel weak. An athlete, a fighter, an honor roll student; I was everything but weak. I wanted to show finished products, the best version of what I could produce, the best version of me. It was easy in a comfortable environment, I knew all the right answers, I knew how to behave, I knew how to get away with things. Presenting a polished version of myself has become harder and harder as I navigate new situations and environments in my life. I don’t always get it right. Sometimes I have to practice.
Practice Makes Perfect
We so easily get wrapped up in our own stories and forget that we may just be a side character or cameo in someone else’s; a lesson to be learned, a heading, a warning. The scrap sheet of paper or rough draft that no one ever really sees.
What happens to my scrap sheets? My practice people? It sounds like a horrible way to think back on your life, right? Well, I don’t think so. Fond memories of past lives can be relieved with the knowledge that those people, those situations, that pain, that practice, has helped you get to where you are and become who you are today.
Are we ever really done being drafts? Who decides when we’re finally a finished product? A finished person?
Personally, I don’t think we ever stop being works in progress. Eventually, we find people we love, and who love us despite the grammatical errors, run-on sentences, and misspellings of our stories. We eventually get to write stories with people and hopefully we can laugh at the mistakes.
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