Achievements in small steps

I totter, I stumble, I pick myself up of the icy paving – ouch! – examine my hands for punctures and bleeding, and get up again in ungainly fashion. Doubtless someone is watching me, but I’ve got only one aim, and don’t care what I look like. As soon as I can, I forget – forget – about that; think about something else because doing so helps everything to heal better, and I feel much less pain when I raise my thoughts to something else.

Arriving back indoors, it would be so very easy to give up. Swallow the age-old dirge that “Life is just too hard, a shitty, bloody mess that gets harder all the time.”

I’m afraid I used to talk to myself like that all the time. But now, I can’t help noticing that, even as I get up off the carpark, actually, doing so is an achievement, something to be pleased about, a step in the right direction. Which makes me naturally inclined to look back at all the other steps I have taken – so many! – to arrive at this point, and to consider what I would like to do next.

I used to be so impatient. Always rushing, pushing, desperate to get finished. Perhaps that was a consequence of chronic discomfort, yearning to arrive somewhere softer, or perhaps I was not taught to see all the joys of careful patience. These are many, varied and ever changing. As is my appreciation for the way in which life unfolds, when we have the courage to take our time, break each task into small parts, and succeed by having the courage not to look always beyond to the horizon, but often, to simply keep on keeping on with what is directly before us.

Thanks for listening.

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