Progress, Seen and Unseen

For my birthday, my mom bought me a wooden puzzle of a train. Now, this isn’t your typical puzzle. It’s 3-D and the pieces are extremely tiny. It is delicate and intricate work. I was excited to receive this gift because I absolutely love trains, but as I was daunted by the task it got put on the shelf to spend its days gathering dust. I was too nervous about whether or not my hands and my eyes were up to the challenge of something so new. Building blocks made of plastic I’ve got down! But small pieces of wood that could easily break in my hands?

Taking on new things can be scary. It puts us in a vulnerable position of possible judgement and ridicule. When you don’t know how to do something, your rate of failure is higher than if you were doing something that you’ve done dozens of times before. Making the decision to take that first step into the unfamiliar is frightening. Will you fail? Will you succeed? The key is taking that first step because if you don’t, you’ll never know! It is a courageous thing, taking that first step, taking the chance that you will make mistakes or that someone might tease you. The discernment is deciding which one you’d regret more – trying something new and failing, or never trying anything new at all? And, just maybe, you might succeed on the first try!

 

These decisions about trying something new tend to be most prominent around New Year’s. As the year comes to a close, people begin posting wrap-ups about what happened to them during the year, mostly their high points because we all know that posting low points doesn’t get the likes on social media, and what their plans and goals are for the next year. Their New Year’s resolutions.

 

The issue I have, and have had for myself pretty much every year, is it’s easy to make a list of things that you want to accomplish throughout the year. Lose weight. Exercise more. Learn a new language. Go back to school. All kinds of things could be put on the list. It’s easy to make the list. And it’s also easy to give up on the list when we don’t see immediate and visible progress. In a society that is becoming increasingly dependent on instant gratification, when we don’t see a quick effect in our lives, we tend to just quit and move on.

 

Similar to trying something new, keeping up with that something new is just as hard. Most things in life won’t have instant success or visible progress. How many of you have children who you know are growing, but you don’t truly see it until you look at old pictures? How many of you have tried to lose weight but when nothing happens in the first couple of weeks, you get discouraged? But then someone else points out that your face looks different?

 

Progress can be both seen and unseen. So often it takes looking back on life to see the changes that have taken place. And, if we’re really honest, sometimes it takes an outsider’s perspective to point out those changes to us.

 

Just before Christmas, I decided that I would pull the wooden train puzzle off the shelf, dust it off, and give it a try. Doing the work close up, I don’t see the progress. But each time I pull back and look at the bigger picture, there it is. Progress. What started as sheets of tiny pieces is starting to transform into a train. I still have many steps and need much patience, but progress is there. I just need to keep going.