Of, relating to, governed by, or acquired through practice or action, rather than theory, speculation, or ideals: gained practical experience of sailing as a deck hand.

Often when I hear the word practical, I think ‘down to earth’, nitty gritty stuff like ‘work hard’, ‘save money’, ‘eat healthy’.

At the core, I think being practical is practicing what you believe. It is putting the important stuff first, filtering out the silly fluff.

For many, this does mean the things above – working hard, saving money, etc, etc. That is because many peoples goals are to live well and comfortably, earn a reasonable amount of money, be able to own what they want and so on. What is important to realise is that being practical may not be the same for me and you.

It is not unusual for people to tell a dreamer to ‘be practical’. This is a reasonable thing to say if by it one means ‘practice or bring about what you are dreaming of’. This is less a reasonable thing to say if what you really mean is ‘what is important to you is not really important’. Often when we say ‘be practical’, we are effectively saying ‘think like me’, or ‘what I believe is important is the important thing’. This may sound somewhat relativistic. It is. We all have different things that we believe to be important or worth practicing. Of course, I do know what I believe to be ‘practical’, but that is another topic.

So, soapbox aside, I think I am far too practical in the attention I pay to nitty gritty stuff like working hard, saving money, and not practical enough with what I believe – love God, love people around you. Hence, this goal. I wish to become more practical.