Brian Johnson reflects on a passage from Arnold Bennett’s chapter "Precautions Before Beginning," warning against excessive initial enthusiasm (ardor) that leads to early failure. He connects Bennett’s advice to meditation teachers (Eknath Eswaran) and writers (Greg Krech), stressing that sustainable progress requires starting small, showing up consistently, and preserving enthusiasm over the long run rather than heroic, short-lived starts.
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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic one. In the last few plus ones, we've been having fun exploring some of my favorite ideas from Arnold Bennett's old school classic, how to live on 24 hours a day. There are a few more gems I want to discuss, so let's get straight to work. Bennett tells us, and I quote, let me principally warn you, against your own ardor, ardor in well doing is a misleading and treacherous thing. It cries out loudly for employment. You can't satisfy it at first. It wants more and more. It is eager to move mountains and diverse the course of rivers. It isn't content until it perspires. And then, too often, when it feels the perspiration on its brow, it wearies all of a sudden and dies without even putting itself to the trouble of saying, I've had enough of this. He continues by saying, beware of undertaking too much at the star. Be content with quite a little. Allow for accidents, allow for human nature, especially our own. And he says, a failure or so in itself would not matter if it did not incur a loss of self esteem and of self confidence. But just as nothing succeeds like success, so nothing fails like failure. Most people who are ruined are ruined by attempting too much. Therefore, in setting out on the immense enterprise of living fully and comfortably within the narrow limits of 24 hours a day, lets us avoid at any cost the risk of an early failure. That's some more wisdom from the chapter called Precautions Before Beginning. Now, I can't read that brilliant line about having too much ardor in the beginning and not think of the ancient idea of being a hero in the beginning, as we've discussed many times. But it's always worth the reminder that in Passage Meditation Eknath Esron tells us, it helps to know at the outset that you will be running a marathon in this program, not simply jogging once or twice around a track. It is good to be enthusiastic when you sit down for meditation the first morning, but it is essential to be equally enthusiastic, equally sincere at the end of the first week and the end of the first month and and for all the months to come. He also tells us, and I quote him again, there is only one failure in meditation, the failure to meditate faithfully. A Hindu proverb says, miss one morning and you need seven to make it up. Or as John of the Cross expressed it, he who interrupts the course of his spiritual exercises in prayer is like a man who allows a bird to escape from his hand. He can hardly catch it again. Then we have Greg Krech quoting Eswaron in his great book the Art of Taking Action, he tells us it's not really the feeling of excitement itself which is the culprit here. It is the loss of excitement which then prompts us to abandon our efforts toward fulfillment of our dreams, dreams which were at one time very exciting to us. If anticipatory excitement moves us to action, the loss of excitement often prompts us to stop. Action dissolves in action Meditation teacher he says. Eknath Eswaran tells us of a Sanskrit word, arambhashura, which means heroes at the beginning. People who take up a job with a fanfare of trumpets but soon find that their enthusiasm is has tiptoed down the back stairs and that's today's plus one. Don't be a hero in the beginning. Start small, show up, do your best and when you inevitably all caps inevitably fall short of your standards, get back up, dust yourself off and close the gap. Give us all you've got today.
