“The more you try, the more you learn.”

“The more you try, the more you learn.” The Saga of Grettir the Strong, Ch. 14.

Grettir the Strong utters this counsel to his son after assigning him an unfamiliar task on the family farmstead.

Grettir’s son initially balks at the new task as he has never performed it before, hence this advice.

Iterations of this advice also show up in various sagas in respect to not only new tasks but to those who assume they “know” something because they have read of it or seen said task performed.

We should all never lose sight of the fact that simply knowing of a thing and seeing a thing done conveys any sense of the experience of the thing read about or observed.

Knowledge is in the doing.

Grettir’s son wants to put off the task until he knows more about it.

How many of us are like-minded with Grettir’s son?

How many of us are world-champion readers up on this or that subject, master-class competitors in “Likes” and “Shares” that indicate what we may “like” to do ourselves but may in fact not be doing at all because of our extensive “Liking” prep time.

[Let us not forget that the word “Share” has been perverted where it no longer means offering something of yourself, of your own creation, but rather “Sharing” the thoughts, creations, experiences of others. To truly “Share” requires something of the self, something of you.]

We may have the desire to learn to swim, we may read every book on the subject, we may belong to dozens of “Swimming” Facebook pages, we may have viewed 987 YouTube videos on swimming technique, we may dress like Michael Phelps in the off-season, but in the words of former President of the Hell’s Angels, Sonny Barger: “To get wet you have to get in the swimming pool.”

The more experiences we wet ourselves in, not merely read, view, “Like” and “Share” the more we do, the more we will know.

„Megum við allir synda vel, synda oft og synda í mörgum vatni. Leyfi þurru landi, þurr lifir til áhorfenda til lífsins.“

“May we all swim well, swim often, and swim in many waters. Leave the dry land, the dry lives to the spectators to life.”