Meaning Emerges Through Showing Up and Repetition
Created at: September 21, 2025
Do the honest work of showing up; meaning is forged in repetition. — Toni Morrison
Showing Up Before the Muse Arrives
At the outset, Morrison’s injunction treats presence not as a feeling but as labor—the honest work of appearing even when inspiration hesitates. In practice, she modeled this ethic: writing before dawn, coffee at hand, watching the light change, as she recounted in The Paris Review interview (1993). By reframing showing up as craft rather than mood, she disarms the myth that meaning must precede effort. Instead, meaning is something we meet halfway. Consequently, the doorway to purpose narrows to a manageable act: start. Once the chair is occupied and the page open, the mind’s energy has a place to accumulate. What looks like stubbornness from the outside is, from within, a quiet agreement with time itself—an agreement that today, again, we will begin.
Repetition as the Engine of Meaning
From there, repetition becomes the forge where raw effort is tempered into significance. Kierkegaard’s Repetition (1843) suggests that meaning is not a single revelation but a return that transforms; the second time is never the same as the first. Each pass through a task reframes the self that undertakes it, and so the task acquires depth. Similarly, William James observed that habits carve channels in conduct, making ideals easier to enact (The Principles of Psychology, 1890). When we do the small honest thing again, values grow legible in our routines. Over time, repetition doesn’t dull the edge; it knaps it—chip by chip—until a tool appears that can cut through confusion.
What the Brain Learns by Doing Again
Beneath the poetry lies biology. Repeated actions strengthen neural pathways through long-term potentiation—Hebb’s principle that cells that fire together wire together (Hebb, 1949). Each consistent session tightens the circuit, decreasing resistance to starting and increasing fluency while working. Moreover, Eric Kandel’s research on memory formation demonstrated how practice consolidates learning at the synaptic level (Nobel Lecture, 2000). Thus, the felt experience of "it’s easier to begin today than yesterday" is not sentimental; it’s structural. By aligning behavior with the brain’s preference for patterned reinforcement, showing up becomes not only a moral stance but a physiological advantage.
Honest Work Means Deliberate Practice
Consequently, not all repetition is equal. The honesty Morrison invokes includes attention—adjusting the work as we go. Anders Ericsson’s research on deliberate practice shows that progress accelerates when repetition targets specific weaknesses with feedback and stretch (Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Römer, 1993). Rehearsal that merely reaffirms comfort stalls; practice that nudges the edge advances. In this light, the daily session should contain a tiny experiment: slower passages, clearer questions, tighter constraints. A brief log—what improved, what snagged—transforms hours into a learning system. Repetition then stops being a loop and becomes a spiral, returning to familiar ground from a slightly higher vantage.
Holding Steady Through Doubt and Drift
When doubts surge, the craft answer is small and repeatable. Anne Lamott’s counsel to write "shitty first drafts" normalizes imperfect starts as the price of momentum (Bird by Bird, 1994). Similarly, the Pomodoro Technique breaks effort into 25-minute sprints with brief rests, reducing the emotional toll of beginning (Francesco Cirillo, 2006). Thus, steadiness is engineered, not wished for. A simple ritual—same time, same cue, same brief duration—turns ambivalence into action. As the ritual repeats, fear learns its place: it may ride along, but it does not steer.
Repetition Builds Communities, Not Just Careers
Beyond the personal, repetition becomes communal glue. Rituals, chants, and recurring gatherings forge shared meanings that no single speech can supply. Morrison’s Beloved (1987) renders this truth in narrative: the community women return in repetitive prayer and song to confront the haunting, their collective cadence summoning a healing no solitary act could accomplish. In this way, showing up together—again and again—creates a rhythm strong enough to carry those who falter. The pattern itself does part of the lifting, reminding us that meaning is both made by individuals and multiplied in chorus.
A Simple Rule You Can Live By
Ultimately, Morrison’s line condenses into a durable rule: minimum daily honest work, repeated. Choose a modest target—fifteen minutes, one sketch, one problem set—and guard it. Close the loop with a one-sentence reflection, so repetition accrues insight instead of crust. If disrupted, return quickly; popular habit advice calls this the “never miss twice” heuristic (James Clear, 2018). Over weeks, the ledger of kept promises becomes its own meaning—a story you can point to. By then, showing up is no longer a debate; it is simply who you have become.