(announcer voice) It's an awesome day up here in Duluth, Minnesota. It's a balmy ... no ummm ... dang it
I was going to do this ... where ... never mind. I'll do it later
Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension Presents.
Last weekend, I had like over 70 emails that I needed to respond to and I had to get ready for a homily
and I had another talk and plus, we had students who are arriving off campus to come to campus
and there's all this stuff going on - all this activity
and what I found myself doing is I'm looking at all these things all these things that need to get done
in addition to like a thousand other things and responsibilities,
how my family is doing and like my parents, how my brothers and sisters are doing and all the other friends I've got
I just felt overwhelmed. And I started feeling a kind of anxious or just worrying about
like how am I gonna get everything I need to get done, done.
and I'm sure that at some point in your life you've experienced the same kind of thing
You've felt overwhelmed and just started to worry and you just
started to feel this anxiety kinda creeping up and it paralyzes you.
You're like, "What do I do next?" Well, I was listening to a guy who,
very helpfully, listening to a guy talking about what you do when you feel overwhelmed
and he referenced a movie or a book called the Martian so I got the book. I went and got the book and read it.
and the idea is this: Matt Damon's character is an astronaut
who gets stranded on Mars on a Mars expedition so he's left for dead on Mars
and he has to find a way to stay alive long enough for maybe the next Mars expedition to come back and rescue him
because he cannot get off the planet Mars to earth. He can't radio Mars to earth.
He just has to stay alive long enough, for like four years, on the planet of Mars for the next Earth expedition to get there
so he's overwhelmed but the remarkable thing is this: that throughout the entire - at least first half of the story-
- that's as far as I've gotten so far. I don't know what happens at the end -
the first half of the story, he's like, "OK, so I have to get water. I don't know where I'm gonna get water...
"...I have to get soil and I don't know where I'm gonna get soil...
"...I have to be able to grow enough food to live for four years. I don't know how I'm gonna get enough food to live for four years."
but what he does instead of feeling overwhelmed and instead of giving in to anxiety and worry,
what he does is he just ACTS and that's the thing: if you ever feel overwhelmed
- again here I'm staring down the barrel of 70 emails plus this, plus this, plus this -
the best thing to do is to just take the next good step.
To be able to ask, "OK, OK. Right now, I can't do everything right now. What CAN I do?"
Action, taking action, is a killer of anxiety and if you find yourself in the midst of worry,
that's probably a good indication that you're not working, because we realize this:
That once you start moving, what happens is - OK yep, you still have all these things to do -
but now because you're taking action, because you're saying, "OK, what's the next thing I CAN do?",
what you end up doing is the next thing you NEED to do.
Still, being overwhelmed has its enemies or action has its enemies because I think a lot of times people
struggle with this thing called perfectionism and the idea behind perfectionism is this:
it's not just that I can't do this task - of course I can do the task - but the question is, can I do it perfectly?
I don't want to do it until I can do it perfectly
and that's one of those things, that perfection paralyzes so many people
and so in that case, to be able to say this:
I remember reading a book a number of years ago that talked about people in Silicon Valley,
when there [was] the tech boom, people were inventing these incredible inventions,
whether they were apps or actually, you know, hardware that revolutionized our culture,
revolutionized the technology industry - all these kind of things -
where you have these engineers and these artists who are creating these amazing gadgets
but what they were doing, they found, was that they were tinkering with them
because they wanted, before they released them, they wanted them to be perfect
and so apparently some of these groups adopted this model that's existed for a long time. The motto is this:
"Done is better than perfect."
To get it done, it's better than to make sure that it's perfect and keep tweaking it and never get it done.
and don't even take my word for it. Let's take St. Paul's word for it.
St. Paul, writing to the community in Philippi, his letter to the Philippians, it's chapter three.
St. Paul even said this, he says, after talking about the Christian life because so many people, so many Christians,
they find themselves like, "OK well, I don't know, I can't pray perfectly, I can't live perfectly, I can't act perfectly, I don't speak perfectly...
"... all these kinds of things, so I can't do it."
Well, Paul talks all about like the great grace that he's striving after,
this righteousness with God, this right relationship with God, and then he says these words:
He says, "It's not that I've already taken hold of it..." - like that perfect relationship with God - "...or that I've already attained perfect maturity..."
St. Paul says, no listen, I'm going after this right relationship with God, which is an overwhelming thing, isn't it?
I'm sure that in your prayer life, in your walk as a Catholic Christian, as a disciple of Jesus, you've been overwhelmed by like, "What do I need to do? ...
"...People tell me I need to pray the Rosary and Liturgy of the Hours and go to daily Mass and have a Holy Hour and be really nice to people and serve the poor..."
It's overwhelming - "... but I continue my pursuit in the hope that I can possess it so indeed just one thing, forgetting what lies behind..."
OK, that's passed, it's done. "I failed 'back then'." Yep, mm hmm. I'm not living back there, I'm learning from it.
"...forgetting what lies behind, straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal."
St. Paul is basically saying when life itself, your life with your family,
with your friends, with your work, it's just overwhelming, take the next good step.
Strive forward for the goal and that striving forward for the goal, it probably looks a lot like this:
OK, what's the next good thing that I need to do? Let's do that, not perfectly, but just do it as best you can right now.
From all of us here at Ascension Presents, my name is Father Mike Schmitz.
God bless
OK now I realize that I talked about the Martian
I forgot to mention it's a little bit of a salty salty book - there's some language in it.
I think actually the very first line has two f-bombs. That's my disclaimer on that one, sorry
"Can't believe that priest recommended a book with a bunch of 'effenheimers'... What the ?!?"