The Missing Ending

Regarding my recent posting (the one pretentiously/preciously titled "Effortlessly Cultivating Tiny Miracles"), here's two funny things about me: 1. I always bury the lede (see the writing in tiny font explaining that I've reframed Zen) and 2. I always forget to add an ending (usually because these things get too long and I despair of anyone reading to the bottom).

So here's the ending, which I can't find a way to wedge into the original posting:

Watching my film about Von and his cookies, you see that the man is sharply conflicted. He freely admits that his cookies are unreplicable, and clearly takes pride in them, yet he's deeply skeptical of the notion that he's doing anything special. He's just following the recipe on the oatmeal box, for god's sake, talentlessly using stupid ingredients.

This contradiction, which I highlighted, isn't just charmingly quirky. Rather, it's the precise combination of perspectives I've declared necessary. To climb high up the curve of declining results, be bemusedly undramatic - never overthinking or overdoing - while sustaining your mild caring over many iterations. So the video didn't just get to the heart of the mystery; it also (unbeknownst to me at the time) reveals the secret.

Von cared because the cookies became his calling card. His friends had come to expect glory, and that expectation stoked some light fuck-giving, sustained over decades of iterations. Von was a man with deep interests and impressive accomplishments; oatmeal cookies were a playful sidelight. So he baked them bemusedly, never taking praise seriously. He was as surprised by their grandeur as the rest of us. After all, it was nothing he did. Things just turned out that way. Such is the effortless cultivation of tiny miracles!