To See Something Get Going…

“Life,” said Benjamin Disraeli, “is a tumble-about thing of ups and downs.”¹ There are times when all of us feel overburdened, with debts, with obligations, so many things undone, so many things to do—worries, problems, and sometimes our share, it seems, of sorrows. And we wonder how we can be everywhere we ought to be, do all we ought to do, meet the obligations, and carry the weight of our worries, as we try to go in too many different directions, too many ways at once—not feeling that we are completing or disposing of or quite in control of anything—just re-shuffling papers, re-shuffling problems.

To all of this, some gentle advice from an unnamed source suggests the “on-at-a-time” approach” “Mountains viewed from a distance,” it says, “seem to be unscalable, but they can be climbed, and the way to begin is to take the first upward step. From the moment the mountains are less high. The slopes that seem so steep from a distance seem to level off as we near them”²

Any task in life is easier if we approach it with the on-at-a-time attitude. One step—a beginning—doing something about something, beginning to see something get going—gives assurance that we are on our way and that the solving of problems is possible. To cite a whimsical saying: “If you chase two rabbits, both of them will escape.”³ No one is adequate to everything all at once. We have to select what is important, what is possible, and begin where we are, with what we have. And if we begin—and if we keep going—the weight, the worry, the doubt, the depression will begin to lift, will begin to lighten.

We can’t do everything always, but we can do something now, and doing something will help to lift the weight and lessen the worry. “The beginning,” said Plato, “is the most important part.”⁴