Eclectic Amateur

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
— G. K. Chesterton

Yes, that’s the new tagline for Eclectic Amateur. I’ve had that quote in my mind for years, but it struck me this morning in a new way.

GKC was writing about the things that every man should do for himself, such as blowing his own nose or writing his own love letters (I don’t think he forsaw the latter being usurped by the greeting card industry).

But, there’s a deeper meaning here too. If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly. The more it is worth, the more we should dare to do it, even if we will do it badly. Even if, most likely, we will “fail” to do it well.

I”m going to apply GKC‘s advice to our hoped-for family agrarian/distributist adventure (which he bears some responsbility for encouraging me to do). Self-sufficiency, good food, independance — all good ideas, but the how of how to make this all work is rather overwhelming and discouraging sometimes. I flip-flop between wanting to just pitch everything and start right now and wondering if I will ever do anything different from today before being forced by circumstances.

But. If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly. If the agrarian way is worth it, it is worth doing even if it is bungled. So what if I fail? I probably will. On my way to “failure”, will I learn more, eat better, be closer to nature and to God, and give my children a better inheritance in the things that matter than if I hadn’t? It seems most likely. How, then, can I really fail? What am I afraid of?

Not that I know what this means yet. Other than “Courage!”

We are not choosing between model villages as part of a serene system of town-planning. We are making a sortie from a besieged city, sword in hand; a sortie from the ruin of Carthage. “Safe! Of course it’s not safe!”
— G. K. Chesterton, The Outline of Sanity