Practice Makes Perfect

Perhaps not perfect, but I believe you’re able to get good at almost anything if you practice it - and fail, and try again, and refuse to quit.

Athletes will call it “training” when they spend the time to practice a certain thing pertaining to their sport. Professions like firefighters and police officers call it drills to simulate possible scenarios. Entertainers call it rehearsal to make sure they know their lines and place markers.

Success will follow when you’ve dedicated the time practicing.

But how on Earth was I to practice coming back from the dead? When the rubber met the road for me it was literal - my head hit the road after accidentally falling off my motorized scooter. I was pronounced dead and was in a 10 day coma.

The part of practicing came in to play only after I had the wherewithal to comprehend the world around me and that I needed to get back to living my life; more realistically, Rebuilding my life. 

I spent a good chunk of time operating, embarrassingly, on a childlike level. I had to practice not peeing whenever I felt the need to. I had to pay closer attention to my surroundings, like traffic when crossing the street.

At one point I remember needing to walk into a large building and I couldn’t for the life of me find the front door. It felt like cognitively I knew what needed to happen, but wires were crossed somewhere in a way that inhibited me from figuring it all out. So then, my practice became things that most of the rest of the world had figured out as children.

Once I’d regained some of the basics, a new question emerged. How do you practice becoming a person again? It’s been said to dress the part you want rather than the part you have. Another way to say that in a well-known statement is, “fake it ’til you make it.” Now when I flip through the memories I carry of the way I was living immediately following the accident, it’s very strange for me to put everything in context. 

Was I “faking” it? Or was I “making” it? It felt like neither, while at the same time I felt consumed by them both. There were a couple things I was dealing with that no amount of faking on my part could be seen as successfully making it. For example, I sustained something called a third nerve palsy, and was clearly cross-eyed. So I was given tasks designed to practice restrengthening both eyes.

The way I see the bottom line (now with fully healed eyes) is that “making” something isn’t necessarily “faking” something. To this day I’m still practicing, and I expect it will be a lifelong process. But it’s worth it; 

life is worth every minute of practicing what you want to perfect.