one step at a time
5 minute read
When my son was about five years old we took a bus out to a local village a couple of miles from the town where we lived. There are a series of footpaths that snake back to town through woodland, alongside a floodplain and a river. It very beautiful and very intreguiging, with lots of features along the way.
Neither of us left with any intention of walking back, but one path led to another and before we knew it we were halfway home.
Had I presented him with the idea at the outset, the prospect of the journey would have weighed so heavy in his imagination that his little legs simply wouldn't have been able to bear the burden of the thought of that walk.
What powered us both in the end was curiosity.
curiouser and curiouser...
One step at a time. One step time.
“What do you think is over there?” I kept asking.
Because he didn't know and because he was curious to find out we became explorers of the unfolding mystery that each path became. For his imagination, the burden was light as he was only ever walking to a place that was ‘just over there.’
We took our time. It was such a wonderful and magical day.
I've lost count of the number of times I've started a project thinking that it would resolve in about a 10th of the time it actually takes. To my credit, or rather the credit of some ancestors, I have a level of persistence and perseverance that appears to make it difficult to let go and give up - sometimes to my detriment.
