One step at a time
There’s no need to hurry; make sure your progress is steady and as slow as it needs to be.
The modern age can be characterized by a consistent pressure to be invincible. It feels like it is expected of us to be able to do everything, do it perfectly on the first attempt without asking for any help. This machine-like mentality has become a normal thought process.
I’m using the term machine-like mentality because machines work like that. If you think about it, when we use a device, they perfectly and effortlessly do what we ask them to on the first attempt. And we expect this behavior from any device because that’s how they are built, to make our lives easier.
But when we use a device, we forget or ignore all the hours of work put in for this device to be made. We don’t think about all the trials and errors needed to debug and make it work smoothly. That way, using more and more devices in our day-to-day life has led to normalizing the effortless production of final products.
We have become so familiar with this process that we expect the same results from ourselves like we are some kind of goal-achieving machine. We only think about the destination — the end goal we want to achieve — we forget about the journey — all the effort and hard work we need to make to succeed.
For example, we want to find our career path by the first job application. Like life has some magical button, and when you press it, you automatically transfer to your dream destination. If only this was the case, maybe then we could worry less.
But if achieving anything was that easy and effortless to do, would it be worth it that much? The answer is probably, no. Because we treasure an achievement by the amount of effort, time, and hard work we put in to accomplish it. The harder we try for something, the more valuable it becomes to us.
It may be easy and convenient to have a device, which can quickly solve some of our problems, but some things cannot be fixed that way. All this process of trying, failing, learning new things, becoming better, and trying again is the true beauty of success. We shouldn’t forget about that. As the famous poem, Ithaka, by C. P. Cavafy says:
“As you set out for Ithaka, hope your road is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery.”
Eventually, you will get where you want to be, so be sure to take all the time you need every step of the way. As always, see you in my next post. Until then, I would love to read your opinion or experience on this topic in the comment section below.
Love, Mal
