“A man’s wisdom gives him patience.” – Proverbs 19:11
What is the greatest distance you have ever walked? What is the longest book you ever read? What is the biggest meal you ever ate? And finally, what do you think these three questions have in common? In case you haven’t already figured it out, the answer is this: Whatever distance you walked you did so one step at a time, you read the book one page at a time, and you ate the meal one bite at a time. In other words, these are all projects that are completed in small stages.
When I came across this riddle recently it struck me how it was a lesson I had to learn the hard way, for as a younger person I had little patience with small steps. I wanted to get from A to B as quickly as possible. Why walk when I could get there faster in a car? Why waste time reading long books when I could read the Cliff Notes version and move on? And food was to devour, not linger over. Then there was college which was a place to graduate from instead of an opportunity for learning. And forget graduate school which would only cause delay in the meteoric rise in my career that was sure to come.
Until one day I looked around and realized I had been stuck in the same position while many of my peers had leapfrogged ahead. They were the ones, of course, who studied harder and took time for graduate school. Only when I started reading thick books, getting up early and going for long walks and runs and bike rides, and taking the time to enjoy the company of family and friends over a nice meal did I begin to catch up.
I was in such a hurry back then, yet as I learned the hard way, it was the one thing that was holding me back. Only when I discovered that by eating smaller bites, reading longer books, and going greater distances one step at a time that life and work and relationships began to take shape in the ways I had always dreamed.
Funny how in my twenties and thirties I had all those years ahead of me, yet I was so impatient. And now that my years have grown more limited it seems so natural and peaceful to live one day at a time, taking one step at a time. I suppose the old Proverb is correct, “a man’s wisdom gives him patience.”