Cheating Time

I didn't really write this on the 27th of August, but I did open the window, and so Blogger thinks that I wrote it on the 27th.
It allows me to cheat and pretend that I actually did write in my blog on the 27th. And when I look back, a few months from now, chances are that all I'll see is the fact that I did write the blog.

I didn't really have an intention when I wrote those first lines, but it does suggest to me something I like remembering: many of the imperfections of the moment fall away at the larger scale because we see the large-scale work, not the small scale work.

When we pick up someone else's work--a book, a paper, a dissertation--we are often impressed just by the mass of the thing--we look at the table of contents, the introduction, etc., and we see the work as a whole--and a completed whole is a worthy accomplishment. Have you ever read a book you thought unworthy of publication? And yet it is published--which is an accomplishment in itself. We can often criticize people who have been published as having sold out, but that doesn't mean that presenting oneself in a way that can be sold is any less difficult.

As we work on a project, we see the details of the immediate present. But when the work is completed, it will be a whole, and needs to be completed as such.