The Myth of Progress 🔁

Field Notes from the Future | 006

At the beginning of the 2020s we were taken on an unplanned and involuntary journey into the future. I’ve been taking notes. Let’s get equipped.

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The beautiful thing about actually doing things in the real world is that there is no faster way to truly learn. You can (and should) read and study, ask advice, prepare. But taking steps and then regrouping is often the only way to discover the truths that will alter you. It was that way for me at the gym recently when I had a shocking realization. It won’t probably shock you in the same way because such things are often glaringly obvious to everyone except the one in need of the lesson. As I struggled to move a stack of plates, I realized that the point of working out was not to achieve proficiency in moving weight. The purpose was not to make lifting weights easy, but to continue to suffer the hardship of lifting ever greater weight. Suffering was the tutor.

Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash

The fiction of progression, moving forward as we gain skill until we surpass the need for the drudgery we happily leave behind, is a tempting illusion. Our pride beckons and tells us that even if we remain at this stage of growth for a while, soon enough we will be beyond such boring and painful realities. We aren’t helped by a culture preaching solutions tailormade to give you the five simple shortcuts you need to have a phenomenally successful whatever it is. We believe that wealth and glory are not only eminently attainable, but also that they will bring us ease and alleviate the daily suffering we are avoiding. We are wrong. And we are addicted to a lifelong search for an illusory door that will open at our touch, a portal to blink us through the years of pain directly to the goal that we see others suffering for. Perhaps the door will finally bring us to the place we imagine an elite few inhabit together, where normal struggles fall away. When such a door and such a destination never appear, we live in constant disappointment, believing that we are not progressing.

But we need to stop looking in the wrong place. Progression isn’t a set of achievements that raise us above the basics or graduates us past the simple tasks required of every humble practitioner in our chosen art or calling. Progression is moving further down the dangerous path of doing what is right in each moment. Once when riding with my grandfather, a weather-beaten veteran of many a hundred-mile Harley Davidson caravan, I remarked that I could tell he truly enjoyed motorcycles. He nodded soberly and said, “That’s why I stopped riding. When you start having too much fun, you aren’t taking it seriously, and that’s when it becomes dangerous. No matter how long you’ve been riding, you have to take every second seriously.” He never progressed, and that’s how he had attained mastery.

I. You Shouldn’t Feel Proficient

In the gym, the moment you feel capable of easily handling the weight in question is the moment you need to challenge yourself further. If the goal was feeling strong, then you would create a plateau for yourself and stay right there. Since the goal is actual strength, you can never allow yourself the luxury of feeling strong. The gym veteran with a crafted physique is still struggling with each rep, and that is how he has maintained his successes. If you are discouraged because writing still feels daunting or prayer has not become a distraction-free practice, I hope that I can help to set you free. The great ones are still struggling, every day. It is the weak ones and the amateurs who are resting at the place of safety, where it feels the way they imagined success would feel. There is nothing the matter with beginning an endeavor with these aspirations or expectations of what the destination will be, and we all have them. But we also need to be ready to let go of them and listen to the wisdom of those who have attained the place we wish to reach. If they are still challenging themselves, still pushing beyond their previous boundaries and refusing to accept personally achievable as a substitute for the work they know they must do, how should we expect to exceed them? We need to acquaint ourselves very intimately with the feeling of weakness that comes from genuine effort. We cannot afford to sell out for mere feelings of capability when we hope to craft a masterwork like a strong family, a lasting marriage, or great art. This is selfishness, an adolescent infatuation with the aesthetic of inhabiting a craft rather than true love of the path. We cannot afford to stop in the shallows when the depths are calling.

II. The Right Way Never Stops

Just because you have learned and grown doesn’t mean you are ready to abandon the path and enjoy the freedom of unconstrained wandering. No matter how many times they perform the action, the requirements of correct form and the need for meticulous care never leave the master. Every time they sit down to the typewriter, they still face the white-page terror staring back. Gravity still pulls the barbell down and perfect form is still mandatory to escape injury. The Way is still narrow. Our secret hope that after the first period of discipline and learning we will reach a new level beyond the need for such things is exactly what is trapping us in perpetual fits of beginning, tiring, and starting over. Hoping to advance to an imagined expertise we fail to even be successful beginners. The only way for us to truly progress is to find out where we have left the path and return to it. There isn’t really all that many secrets or shortcuts, and certainly none that are worth paying for.

You can probably recite the steps in your head already. But you forgot them in your rush to move past them to effortless mastery or similar fictions. Take them up again in humility. Embrace the feelings of frustration that will pile up each time you repeat the same boring steps and marvel again each time they produce something beautiful, just as the wise said they would. Until you accept that there is no other path and no shortcuts on this one, you haven’t even begun. But what of improvisation, and creativity, and artistic rebellion? Watch the great ones, really study them. Even their flights of fancy are leaps ahead or above the path, not off of it. Innovate as you will in genre and form, but you’re still not going to escape coming into the studio and playing your heart out. And I’m not simply peddling fanatical grindset here, either. There are stages and places for rest and stillness. The difference between this and laziness will only become clear on the path. You’ll journey alongside fellow travelers and find yourselves wordlessly partaking in identical rituals and intuiting what comes next because you’ve both been taught the same simple rules. It would be almost impossible for you to describe some of these things to someone who has not chosen to restrict themselves to the craft you are pursuing. You’ll find yourself saying things like “you’ll just know when it’s right” or “after a while it comes second nature” and they will nod and think that you mean mastery will free them from the need for discipline and habits. They’ll learn, in time. Just as you did.

III. The Proficient Know What to Repeat

This is the only way I know to progress. The longer you repeat the simple disciplines that actually provide results, the more progress you will make. But each day will probably consist in familiar practices and all-too-familiar feelings of pain and suffering. You can run from these for a while, but none of those steps will advance you towards your goal. The only reps that count are the ones that cost you. Be careful in watching the artisans and adepts from the outside, thinking that the apparent ease with which they perform these things conceals nothing. Ask them questions. Learn that they still rehearse each step in their mind, still follow the same ways they learned decades ago, still struggle with fear and temptation to avoid the work. But after a few questions like these you’ll begin to see the pattern. There are only so many artist interviews and writing books and tutorials that you need, because they will all start to say the same things (if thy are honest and not hacks peddling new shortcuts).

Through years of ministry I’ve learned that when people come asking advice, they are often disappointed or frustrated by what I have to offer. This became something of an inside joke with the high school kids in our church, to the point that they would walk up to one of the leaders and say “I already know what you’re going to tell me: Am I reading the Bible? Am I praying? Am I spending time with others?” Then we would both chuckle and the student would roll their eyes a bit and walk away encouraged. All that had been required was for them to be reminded of the Way and encouraged to continue in it. It doesn’t matter how many years you pursue your calling, you are always moments away from failure through a few simple mistakes achievable by the barest neophyte. You never become special or invincible, you just repeat the steps over greater periods of time. You must always pay attention.

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These are probably not the popular answers, but I become more convinced of them each time I stray from simplicity into the thickets of elaborate experimentation or sit around waiting to graduate from the need for discipline. I’ve trudged shamefacedly back to the beginner’s path and reset my eyes on the horizon enough times. I trap myself in the damaging cycle of fervent flights of fancy and disillusionment by refusing the more humble cycle of doing my work each day. If I feel totally in control of the weight I’m hoisting, then I can rejoice that my strength has grown. But my next step must be to make the task painful again. The modern world sells endless variations of idyllic afternoons where we are perched in perfectly chaotic and impossibly luxurious surroundings, every need attended to by invisible servants, children out of frame, finances a solved issue, free to balance our brush in hand or tap away at a vintage typewriter or fill our journal with manicured spiritual insights. No such place exists. If we are to make good things in this world, it will be through repetitive suffering.

So few will choose this path. Many comparatively easy paths exist, scenic detours with occasional experiences that mimic ineffable imperfect reality. Endless byways littered with carnival barkers insisting that methods exist you haven’t yet dreamed of. Most people will settle for spiritual Disney World, something realer than real that answers their hopes of what the journey would be like. They are waiting for you to exemplify the Way. Every day spent trying to advance beyond and achieve effortlessness is a wasted day. Walk down the path that you already know, and bring back stories that will captivate those satisfied with their feelings of self-sufficiency. Only those who have walked far enough to feel their own weakness at each dawn have anything worthy to tell us. What are you afraid of? It will simply require your total effort and humble attention.

I’ll see you in the Future.

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This is how I did it, Anton. I never saved anything for the swim back. ~ Gattaca

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. ~ 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

My son, keep your father's commandment, and forsake not your mother's teaching. Bind them on your heart always; tie them around your neck. When you walk, they will lead you; when you lie down, they will watch over you; and when you awake, they will talk with you. For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light, and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life…. ~ Proverbs 6:20-23