Seth Godin recently made a post that sort of wrapped the concepts of life long learning, creation being a process, and failure being part of any endeavor.
He starts by saying Rome WAS built in a day.
Rome was built in a day.
It wasn’t finished in a day. In fact, it’s still not finished.
But the day someone said, “this is Rome,” and announced the project, it was there.
Sometimes we get hung up on the beginning, unwilling to start Rome unless we’re sure we can finish it without incident.
I appreciate his suggestion that things come into being when they are acknowledged as existing and being named. Yet something can have an acknowledged existence and not be complete. In the process things are discarded and destroyed and other things remain just as there are parts of Rome which have endured as well as have gone from existence. Or like the Colosseum it both exists as a construction people visit, albeit in a partially destroyed state, but also has some of its constituent parts which were carted away contributing to other structures in the city.
Essentially a version of the Ship of Theseus where some discarded parts are recycled and others destroyed even as others have been added.
In that context as Godin says, we can’t go into the start of some endeavor with too much expectation about the form success will take lest we become paralyzed conceptualizing all of what will be required. That is as true about initiating a creative project as it is building a city or creating ourselves.
There was a day when you came into being. Was it the day of your birth or sometime later when your personality and personal philosophy developed? Are you still being built and who is doing the building?