Dear Reader,
I caught myself smiling at something this week.
I had opened a notebook that I'd been so excited to fill at the beginning of the year. The first few pages were neat, full of plans and good intentions. Then there was a gap. Weeks of empty pages. Life had become busy, other things had taken over, and somewhere along the way I had quietly stopped writing in it.
For a moment I had the familiar thought that perhaps I should just start a new notebook. There is something strangely appealing about fresh beginnings. They ask nothing of us. Half-used notebooks, on the other hand, remind us of every promise we made and make us feel like we failed to keep them.
It made me wonder whether that is how many of us think about ourselves.
We miss a few mornings. We leave the project untouched for longer than we intended. We lose our rhythm, and before long we begin speaking as though we have become a different sort of person. "I used to be disciplined." "I was doing well until..." "Perhaps I'm just not someone who follows things through."
I have said all of those things to myself at one time or another.
But the more I study the greats that have come before me, the less I believe discipline has much to do with never drifting.
It seems to have far more to do with returning.
Seneca once wrote, "As long as you live, keep learning how to live." I don't think he meant that there comes a day when we finally master ourselves. I think he understood that living well is something we keep practising for as long as we are here.
Perhaps discipline is like that too.
Perhaps it isn't a straight road that the fortunate among us manage never to leave. Perhaps it is simply the quiet decision, made over and over again, to come back to what matters after we've wandered elsewhere.
There is something deeply hopeful about that thought.
It means that this morning counts just as much as the one you missed yesterday.
If you've been waiting for the perfect Monday, or the beginning of another month, you may be waiting for something that was never required of you in the first place.
The work is still there.
So are you.
And that is enough to begin.
Warmly,
Fellow Captain
Letter 005.