Practice is one word I’ve heard times without a number. If I haven’t heard it before now, or in this case a couple of months ago, it’ll be added to my vocabulary as a new word.
Not doing anything is the opposite of practice, maybe that’s just my procrastination speaking, my laziness, or in most cases nervousness or perfectionism.
Perfectionism. It’s this word I came across today, in my weak attempt of making reading blogs a daily habit. Yeah, that’s another area of practice, I just discovered or learned today.
I think all humans have a little bit of an urge to be perfect. You want everything we do to be error-free. To be superb, to create mind-blowing, amazing work. You want people to go “Omg, did she create this”? That moment where people are so amazed and in awe of your work, that it’ll take God’s intervention and the tiny bit of home training you have left not to gloat. Even tho, it’s okay to gloat, or maybe be proud, you know, it’s your choice.
You neglect the fact that you have to go through the not-so-good, ugly first drafts as most people like to call it, to be “that” good. Nobody created an amazing piece straight off the bat on their first try, or maybe some geniuses do, well you are not a genius or maybe you are, anyway, that’s not my point.
My point is, that you have to be ugly before you become beautiful, and this is most definitely a letter to myself. I don’t even know if I’m writing to you rn, reading this.
For so long, I have been incapacitated. I have done nothing. Well, you can’t blame me, I wanted to be perfect on the first try. And I thought I had it in me, you know. Sometimes, you just know. I mean, it’s gotta be in there. You’ve been learning, jumping from one course to another, but nothing will come out of that residual knowledge if you don’t practice.
Practice. That’s our keyword for today. If you don’t work, you don’t do anything, you don’t act out your accumulated knowledge, how do you know you know that thing? Huh? How do you know you understand?
“Wisdom is the application of knowledge” is something I’ve always known, but last week Sunday, in Church, it was explained, in fact broken down. It goes: When you accumulate facts and information, and you store it, that is you gaining knowledge. You should take note of how “know” comes from knowledge. You are knowing, whether you’re doing research or unintentionally gathering information, you’re in the process of knowing. You’re on your path to becoming a knowledgeable individual, congratulations.
After this knowledge you have gained, understanding comes next. This information that you have, how well do you understand it? How well do you comprehend it? Can you explain it to someone else? Do you get it? These are some questions you should ask yourself after acquiring knowledge. I know this question cannot be answered by a Nigerian student in the University, who started to read a text, just a few hours before the exam. Understanding? Really? Please, I just want to write and go.. Ask this student to come explain it the next day and she can not remember. You should know why. She didn’t read to understand. She just wanted to get the information.
Now, the ability to apply already understood knowledge is Wisdom. You use the knowledge you have gained, and understood, to produce something, and that is what is called wisdom.
What is the essence of this knowledge you have, if you don’t use it? If wisdom is not used? That is where practice comes in. Practice is what helps you to utilize what you have learned.
Practice does not have to be something huge. You don’t have to do what you’ll do in 6 months in 2 days. Remember, the goal is to do something. To apply the information you have accumulated. It doesn’t have to be perfect if it’s perfect, is that even normal? Especially when you are new to that thing.
For the longest time, I have believed that I didn’t know what to do, or didn’t understand what it means to “practice” but I tell you as a fact that you just have to start. You just have to do the littlest of things. Nothing fancy, you can just stick to the basics, to get the ball rolling.
Whenever you want to start practicing, remember to give yourself Grace. Understand that you don’t have to be good at first. You just want to do something. You’ll suck at it. It won’t turn out nice, but you’d have practiced. You’d have attempted. And I can attest to it that you just have to start somewhere. Your mind will wander enough to tap your creative juices and you’ll be surprised how satisfactory it can be just to practice.
If this piece is as beautiful to you as it is to me, clap my friend, clap.(50 times please, thank you!).
