Dear friend, I know you want to achieve your goals very quickly and you’d rather I not slow you down, but just pause a bit…this letter is for you.
At the train station, the clinic and the airport, we often have to wait on queues. Too easily, we lose our patience, act rudely towards others in line and sometimes cut ahead rather than patiently take our position in line.
You know why? We’re an instant gratification generation.
We want to see the doctor, or we want to cross a busy road, or we want to board a plane, or we want to become experts, or we want to “get rich quick.” And in each of these cases, we want to do it since… yesterday.
And anything that would slow us down, we fight it. We throw legal and ethical constraints like traffic rules, kindness and justice into the dust. We fail to realize there’s great value in patience, in slowing down to relish the moment, and in growing to become what we want, rather than just getting there at once.
What if we could just stop for a moment to reflect on the value of due process? What if life wants us to gradually become, and learn vital lessons as we grow, rather than to just get to our goals without observing the process? Isn’t there a reason a child doesn’t become a man in a day?
Let me tell you a little story you might already know.
Around 11:30 a.m. on May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the zenith of Mount Everest. It was a feat they achieved after years of dreaming, and seven long weeks of climbing.
It was a heart-warming moment for them. For the rest of their team. And the world. It was a huge victory – one attained through toil and with time.
What if they had been flown onto Everest by a helicopter? Would they feel the joy of their accomplishment? I doubt it.
Real positive changes and landmark achievements come in stages and take much effort and time, telling us to embrace the process.
If you didn’t already know how I started blogging, it took me six months to successfully have my first blog up and running.
Why? Because I bought a domain name and wanted a blog/website immediately. It was too much trouble for me to properly invest time, energy and patience to learn how the process all works. And because I wasn’t ready to wait and embrace the process, it took me 6 months to successfully set up the blog.
More than 40 years ago, a small group of volunteers came up with an innovative idea to build the world’s first free library database of digitized books. It was only many years later that the public was able to see and fully appreciate the finished product of thousands of books from around the world scanned into a fully searchable database, Project Guttenberg.
And while it is now indeed instant gratification for many of us to search this vast free database of books and to get results in seconds, this was a product developed over many years, involving a massive human effort and likely enlisting experts from many fields like database experts, librarians, proofreaders, and engineers.
We always want pleasure and comfort: sun tanning, luxury shopping, beach walking, crunching sumptuous barbecue spiced with cottonseed oil, flaunting designer wears, using selfie sticks to capture memories and getting things done fast and stress-free. But that’s not all what life’s about. Life is only interesting when we accept and appreciate the delays, challenges and setbacks that punctuate it.
I’m not out asking you to stall or to start procrastinating. I’m asking you to realize that life teaches us great lessons in every delay, and that for each time we can’t move on without breaking laws or ethical rules, we may need to slow down. Why? Because, well, the route we take to our dreams is as important as the goals we haste to reach.
So, friend, enjoy your long stay in line at the supermarket. Enjoy the chef’s one-hour delay at the busy restaurant. Enjoy the uninspiring count at the traffic light.
Will it take more time? Of course!
Does it require much courage and discipline? You bet!
Will it be easy? Not so much.
But will it be worth it? Absolutely! It will make you more loving and compassionate. I promise you. Try it.
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