Every noble work is bound to face problems and obstacles. It is important that we check our goal and motivation thoroughly. Once a positive goal is chosen, decide to pursue it all the way to the end and have no regrets even it is not realized because we learn along the way.

When you make a mistake, don't look back at it long. Take the reason of the thing into your mind, and then look forward. Mistakes are lessons of wisdom. The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power. -Phyllis Bottome

Many people never reach their goals because they don't define them, learn about them, nor even seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them.

Many of us go fishing all our lives without knowing what we are fishing, nor the proper way to fish. The story of an ant that follows tells us that vision and planning are essential in achieving what we want in life.

As the story goes, a tiny ant was seen carrying a huge feather across the back terrace. Several times it was confronted by obstacles in its path and after a momentary pause it would make the necessary detour. At one point, the ant had to negotiate a crack in the concrete about 10mm wide. After brief contemplation, the ant laid the feather over the crack, walked across it and picked up the feather on the other side then continued on its way.

Vision without action is daydream. Action without vision is nightmare. Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.

It was fascinating to watch the ingenuity of one of God’s smallest creatures. It served to reinforce the miracle of creation. Here was a minute insect, lacking in size yet equipped with a brain to reason, explore, discover and overcome. But this ant, like the two-legged co-residents of this planet, also shares human failings.

After some time the ant finally reached its destination – a flower bed at the end of the terrace and a small hole that was the entrance to its underground home. And it was here that the ant finally met its match. How could that large feather possibly fit down that small hole? Of course it couldn’t. So the ant, after all this trouble and exercising great ingenuity, overcoming problems all along the way, just abandoned the feather and went home.

The ant had not thought the problem through before it began its epic journey and in the end the feather was nothing more than a burden. Isn’t life like that! We worry about our family, we worry about money or the lack of it, we worry about work, about where we live, about all sorts of things.

These are all burdens, things we pick up along life’s path and drag them around the obstacles and over the crevasses (cracks) that life would bring, only to find that at the destination, they are useless and we can’t take them with us.

By Tim Pedrosa



 

The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. ~Randy Pausch

Tim