A Practice Is Not a Means to an End

The idea of a practice is not a particularly Western one.

We Yanks and Euros always want a payoff. If we’re gonna bust our butts writing the next Game of Thrones or inventing the next iPhone, our mantra is “Show me the money!” Or at least the recognition, the fame, the accolades.

Cuba Gooding, Jr. won an Oscar for his performance in “Jerry Maguire”

A practice is not like that.

A practice exists for its own sake. 

A practice is like you and I climbing trees when we were kids. It was play. It was fun. We expected nothing “in return.” If we fell out of that oak or maple and broke our arm, we might have cried because of the pain, but we didn’t complain, did we? We didn’t feel “cheated.” The thought never even occurred to us. 

Can we do that now? Can we enter the studio to dance as well as we possibly can, aiming for the stars … and let that be the reward, with no hopes or expectations beyond that? 

I confess I’ve never fully achieved that mindset. I do want to “succeed.” I do want readers to enjoy and be moved by what I write. But I recognize that impulse as arising from a part of me that’s not the best part, not the part I played from when I was a kid … and not the part I want to work from now. 

A practice is a discipline. It’s not just the work or the art, it’s the state of mind we occupy when we pursue the work or the art.

That’s what makes the idea of a practice great. That’s what makes it worth doing from now till our final breath.

Can we aspire without ego? Can we work like hell and let the work be its own reward? Can we detach our emotions from the outcome of our enterprise … and still pursue that enterprise with all our heart?

This is not an idle question.

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