The Doing

“To achieve greatness, one must be willing to be a masterpiece and a work in progress all at the same moment.” 

In my education, I learned many things, and one of the most profound things I learned in those years was from a woman named Joan Potter. She was a titan of a woman. Many, many people know that name, but very few had the opportunity to study with her. And I remember being not only young, but feeling young, as I look back, I remember how young I was, because, not understanding the weight of the woman I was in front of, I asked the most profoundly childlike question. In all of her weight, she answered. She said, “it's in the doing”. I often meditate on the concept of transformation. In my morning meditation, it oftentimes leads me to, “if that then what.” 

Right now, we are seeing one of the most incredible transformations in politics for the better, New York City… incredible time we live in…I believe that the fear is not that it won't work but that it will!

One must always remember that it is in the doing, and it is in that doing that there will be a mess, a muck…Because we live in a society that values “the final form” and there is a fear of being in the change, being in the mess, in the doing, but the masterpiece is in that. 

The final form is in the mess. Though you be in the mud, there are still seeds for flowers. It's holding the line through the muck and waiting for the transformation. That takes strength, it takes strength to hold muck in miracle, to be in the doing… to know or believe, have hope that through this we weighed and there will come a day when... This capacity for transformation is in all things. Michael Jordan didn't just slam dunk; it was years…focus, in the doing.

My very prestigious school was also home to one of the greatest schools for ballet. And you would see these beautiful creatures come out of their studios, feet torn to sunders. I have never seen a more dualistic experience in my life of seeing someone so gorgeous, not only in the physical body, but the face of angels would come out of studios with feet that screamed disaster. Yet it's what they gave up the sacrifice of doing… the beauty we saw on stage, the doing we could see in their feet.

So whether you are basketball to ballet, it is in the doing that there is a way. 

And that's what I've been meditating on.