Thursday, June 23, 2022
The world never shows you what it’s like to be in the kitchen 4a.m., taking care of all the initial steps of your Thanksgiving feast. You won’t win a blue-ribbon for putting on your apron. No-one will clap for you when you start chopping veggies, putting the spice-rub on the pork roast, or starting the water to boil. Those initial steps are all done under the cover of darkness, in the lonely, wee hours of the morning. But if you want to produce quality, it has to start from somewhere, doesn’t it?
I’ve often heard that it’s lonely at the top. Maybe so, but it’s really lonely at the beginning. Anything of quality has a step one, and we forget the profound importance of that truth. Your first piano lesson, that’s toddler-level stuff. Your first steps as a business owner, filing the paperwork on your LLC, that’s menial. Yet it’s simple, the first steps are never much to speak of, are they? So we never see or hear about them, yet they keep so many people from accomplishing anything. The dullness of the beginning, the isolation and fear of even getting started – dream killers.
From scratch, that’s where the best begins. So what are you going to do? Envy those who have their mouth-watering meals ready to present to the masses? Or will you stumble into the kitchen, and put on your apron? I know it’s easy to believe that heroes just seem to appear. But you know better, behind every success story lies a lowly, child-like, and lackluster simplicity of step one. The beginning is that lonely place that no-one notices, or seems to even care about. But don’t be fooled, just put on your apron. There’s never a shortcut anyway, so you just as soon start from scratch.