A few days ago I saw the phrase "start from where you are" in a newspaper ad for a fitness center. A quick Google search revealed that the phrase is not an uncommon one. When I thought about it, I realized that the phrase is deeper than it first seems. Unpacking it a bit reveals several important things embedded in it:
• To start from where you are, you have to have an idea where you are. More generally, you have to face the facts about where you are — which incidentally is a corollary of the First Commandment. Given that we're all human, and we all err, developing an estimate of where you are entails gathering as much information and insight as possible, including from other people both present and past.
• Starting means you're not settling for staying where you are, passively accepting the existing state of reality. (Compare with the vaguely-unsettling injunction "bloom where you're planted.") Instead, you're estimating what it is about reality that you'd like to be different, and starting to try to make it happen. By the way: When you do this, you're serving as one of God's created co-creators, helping advance his eons-long cosmic construction project.
• The reality-changes that you want aren't going to happen instantaneously: You're going to start making those changes, because it's a movie, not just a snapshot. You might not live to see the fruits of your labors, but 13.7 billion years of history suggest that your efforts won't go to waste.
• If you continually face the facts as you go, you won't be afraid to change your mind (Greek: metanoia, commonly translated as "repentance") about the approach you're taking, and perhaps even about what it is you're trying to accomplish, when that seems to be called for.
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