The Trying
When I was in middle school, I remember going to a local bookstore and waiting for midnight to arrive, anticipating the release of the final Harry Potter book. The books and movies were a great joy of mine, and one I can easily tap back into when I come across Harry Potter content.
Despite this, I never grasped onto reading the Fantastic Beasts books until this weekend. And what a fun time it was to dip back into this world and immerse myself in a wonderful, vibrant, detailed, magical world.
And while the stories themselves are so fun to read, I also appreciate the little drops of wisdom that the characters give, and this series continues to provide that.
In Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, one of the characters, Newt, reflects with Dumbledore on a family loss that Dumbledore has experienced. Newt says, “But even if we’ve made mistakes, terrible things, we can try to make things right. And that’s what matters. The trying.”
And that continued to resonate with me; the trying.
This same weekend that I reread these books, I found myself separately contemplating my own growth. Coming from a significant portion of my life being filled with perfectionism, and not really encountering that same unfair pressure over the past couple of years, I marveled at how that shift occurred. And I found myself struggling to pinpoint exactly how my mind shifted from cruelty, pressure, and ridicule to being kinder, more patient, and compassionate. There was excellent therapy involved, growth in understanding myself and why perfectionism was there, but truly pinpointing how my mind shifted was evading me.
And then I read this quote, and I realized that the trying fits my scenario too.
My mind latches on much more to the effort I’m putting into things, and with increased mind-body awareness, I’m much more attuned to what my maximum effort is day to day. And so my mind can calm itself because it finds comfort in knowing I’m trying. It gives me grace when I realize that my best effort today looks much less than what they were yesterday.
In a way, I’m fixing the mistake I made with myself of letting perfectionism rule my self-talk for as long as it did. I can say that this quote is accurate, as trying to fix our mistakes really does go a long way.
Our mistakes will look different for each of us, but mistakes are something we all make. So, for you, what does trying look like? How can you start making an effort to right things this week?
