The Dignity of Effort

Why putting energy into something you genuinely care about is so important: the grace is in trying

Last night I every nearly embedded my brand new laptop into the drywall on the other side of the dining room.

I was just that frustrated.

It was late in the day, which is not a good time for me to try to wrestle with technology. I am doing my damnedest to learn Wordpress. A few years back, the Wordpress I was using on my old website was simple.

When it comes to technology, simple is what works for me, particularly after too many head knocks. My short term memory is questionable at best, and when it comes to technology, well. I used Skype for the first time two weeks ago. Get the idea?

This isn’t simple. Not only is it not intuitive, it’s like wandering into a huge corn maze. No map. At best I stumble onto a menu, then lose it, can’t get back. When my social media wizard shares my screen he makes it look like child’s play.

To him, it is. I took copious notes, none of which were the slightest bit useful when I repeatedly erased text boxes that were part of a loaded design. Couldn’t locate a bar with a trash can that had been there three minutes prior. I was furious, finally had to get up and walk away. The plan was to have done ten blog posts by last week.

Last week, my ass.

What I have been able to post is a tattered, mangled version of what it’s supposed to look like.

Yet, this is what it looks like when it’s working.

This is the dignity of effort.

I was back at it this morning at four o’clock, making the same mistakes, finding myself painted into the same corners of the corn maze. My social media expert and I will be sharing a screen again at 10 am. I sent him a very spicily-worded email last night. My anger isn’t at him. It’s at me. I feel like a moron. At least in the early morning I am less likely to launch a $1200 projectile into the far wall.

Yet, this is what it looks like when it’s working.

Let me give another example.

Every twenty minutes my timer goes off. I head back to the living room where my kickboxing DVD is on pause. I punch play, and launch into the next set of combinations, kicks, and punches. Damn, that feels good.

Three years ago when I first bought that DVD, it sure didn’t feel good. I was a putz (still am but that’s another article). As much as I make fun of my very unprofessional kickboxing techniques, these days I‘m a lot better. Much more balanced. My punches are swift and hard, my hands nearly always on guard. I can feel the difference. It isn’t just that I can keep up, it’s that I can increase the difficulty on my own, and at 67 am now considering taking lessons when our conditions calm down.

Having never done any kind of kickboxing before, it would have been foolish to expect myself to have nailed it the first time. I kept up, but my form was awful. No wonder my neighbors toss nickels on my deck.

Despite the fact that I know there is a learning arc, I still get annoyed when I can’t figure out something the first time. Just nail it. The ridiculousness of this expectation is demonstrated by the fact that I would never, ever expect someone else to be able to nail a new skill first time out.

Why, pray tell, would any of us expect that we could, or should? Why on earth are we so unfair with ourselves, and sometimes others? If you suffer from perfectionism, and I do, this may well ring true for you.

What I sometimes fail to remember is that there are some things that are far harder for me than they may be for others. My brother was in many ways a natural. He was gifted in areas that I never was, but by the same token, I was gifted in areas he wasn’t. There’s no right or wrong here. It’s one of the reasons comparisons are so odious. You and I are universes of one.

My ex used to drip condescension when I asked him for help with technology. He would deliver exaggerated baby-step instructions for things that I have long known and understood in that excruciating way that jerks sometimes use when they feel the need to emphasize how stupid someone else is. By the time we got to the part I actually needed help with I was so irritated at his behavior I was done with it. There’s no dignity in that. I had been making an effort. I didn’t need to be punished for what I honestly just did not understand. Neither does anyone else.

Just because X is easy for you doesn’t automatically mean it should be easy for anyone else. The implied should is an offense to the very idea of diversity. It’s also unfair for us to apply the implicit (stupid) to ourselves for not figuring something out the very first time, every time. That doesn’t make someone superior. Lording it over someone who is struggling does, however, tend to make us assholes.

How incredibly unfair, unrealistic, and utterly impossible.

First, let’s define:

Dignity: the state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect.

Effort: a vigorous or determined attempt.

Note: I didn’t say you or I achieved. The emphasis here is on an honorable attempt.

My ability to lean into that kickboxing DVD is the result of applied effort, hilarity, patience, and doing it over and over again. Recognizing that I HATE the roundhouse kicks, which means that I do them over and over again.

This is the same dignity of effort I have applied to other areas in my life that are important to me: writing, horseback riding, professional speaking. You get the drift.

Number of times I nailed it on the first try:

Zero.

Kind of like a first-time golfer’s hole-in-one.

But I try. If something is important enough, I keep trying.

The dignity is in the effort.

There is enormous grace in recognizing that I have full permission to NOT understand Wordpress. That in and of itself doesn’t make me stupid. It means that in some ways, important ways, my brain simply doesn’t work this way, at least not naturally.

If you want to witness the dignity of effort, go to any veteran’s rehab center where limbless peeps of mine are learning to walk again, or to use prosthetics.

If you want to see the dignity of effort, watch any of the thousands of folks who walk Red Rocks on September 11th to raise money for the firefighter’s fun. Some of them don’t have both legs, or have to crawl.

If you want to see dignity of effort, witness the thousands who have left their homeland because of terrorism, everything they love, just to give their kids a shot at a life without imminent fear of death from a bullet, a bomb or the wrong answer to the “God question.”

If you want to see dignity of effort, you might witness the sometimes hopeless efforts to save victims of our current conditions. The medical community that wouldn’t even consider not trying.

The dignity is in the effort.

There is little dignity in not even trying, giving up before you start. Making a million excuses for why you can’t. I’ve done that too. Even gotten angry at those who did try, while I didn’t, and felt deep shame both at my cowardice and my personal attacks on those who did try, failed, tried again anyway.

I’ve tried a great many things over the course of my 67 years. Most of them I am quite lousy at. Many gave me plenty of pleasure in the trying, if not hilarious stories, like the one and only time I tried to learn inline skating. I was 61. I nearly broke my ass. In fact, I did break my ass: coccyx bone. I finally sold those damned skates this year to Play It Again Sports.

The great grace is in the trying. Even better, having those who are working with you show enormous patience and understanding. To wit:

Here’s what I got about twenty seconds ago from my social media wizard JC after I called myself a “moron” in a fit of pique last night:

Not a moron. This is simple to me because its my everyday. I couldn’t fathom how you write the volume you do, or how you travel with the confidence you do. So deep breath and give yourself a break. This is learning and doing. However, I am a big believer that when starting something new, not every solution is ideal. So let me stretch the feelers today and we will try some experiments when we get together.

You can see why I choose to work with JC, not just because we make each other spew our coffee, but this Millennial is like a lot of others I know: wise way beyond his years.

My performance bar, like JC’s is unbearably high. For those of you being forced to try new things in our current Conditions, being made mildly nuts by proof of failure, again:

This is what it looks like when it’s working.

It’s deeply uncomfortable. Prescisely.

If all you do is what you know, you will never grow. You and I can, however, sit on our rotting laurels for the rest of our lives being competent, sort of, in a limited number of things, and have experience in almost nothing else.

Here is where I break with Yoda: there is always try. And in trying, you do. If your heart is in it, it has dignity.

Make the effort. That could make all the difference.

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