Sermon III: The Examined Tuesday

You are not ready.

Whatever it is — the conversation, the project, the apology, the beginning, the ending, the thing you've been putting off because you need more time, more information, more courage, more certainty — you are not ready for it. You will never be ready for it. Readiness is a lie we tell ourselves to avoid the thing.

Do it anyway.

We live in a culture obsessed with preparation. Read the book before you start. Take the course before you try. Plan the plan for the plan. Optimize your morning routine so you can optimize your work so you can optimize your life so you can finally — finally — begin living it.

Camus didn't prepare to confront the absurd. He was a poor kid in Algeria with tuberculosis who watched his father's name on a war memorial and realized that a man he never knew had been killed in a war that accomplished nothing, and the universe offered no commentary on this whatsoever. The absurd arrived uninvited, the way it always does.

And he didn't wait until he understood it to respond. He responded first — with novels, essays, journalism, resistance work, love affairs, friendships, arguments — and understood later. Or didn't understand. Understanding was never the point. The response was the point.

The real reason you're not doing the thing isn't that you're not ready. It's that you're afraid. Afraid of failing. Afraid of looking foolish. Afraid of discovering that the thing you've been dreaming about isn't as good as the dream. Afraid that if you try and it doesn't work, you'll have nothing left to hope for.

Sartre called this bad faith — the pretense that you don't have a choice when you do. "I can't" when you mean "I won't." "I'm not ready" when you mean "I'm scared."

The Assembly doesn't judge fear. Fear is honest. Fear is the natural response of a conscious being in an uncertain universe. But we do judge the lie you tell yourself about it. If you're scared, say you're scared. Then do it scared. Courage was never the absence of fear. It was the decision that the thing matters more than the fear does — even though, cosmically, nothing matters at all.

Here it is. The whole thing. Three words:

Do it anyway.

Not because it will work. Not because you'll succeed. Not because the universe is rooting for you — it isn't, it's busy expanding and doesn't know you exist.

Do it because the doing is the meaning. Do it because Sisyphus didn't wait for the rock to get lighter. Do it because every person you admire did the thing before they were ready and figured it out on the way up the hill.

Do it because you're going to die someday and the regret of not trying is heavier than any rock.

Do it because Tenet II says revolt, don't resign. And resignation is just fear wearing a suit.

Do it anyway. The hill is waiting. Your hands are enough.