Life Tells You What To Do

If you just listen, life tells you what to do.  All one has to do, is solve the problem of their present predicament -- and that qualifies them for a higher challenge and calling -- and not that one has to aspire to reach the top at the very beginning, without solving anything.  That is the natural progression.  One simply has to do one's best -- at any task, no matter how menial and trivial it seems at the time, because that successful completion, is the foundation for every other subsequent challenge.

There is no skipping only to the top jobs and positions -- from not having done anything well to qualify for them.  If one thinks they can skip those important foundation-building exercises and practices, they will soon learn that they are missing that vital lesson when they need it most.  But if they have it in their arsenal and repertoire of skills and assets, it is there for the taking, and using -- even without deliberately knowing so.

Increasingly, that is how most skills are acquired -- without deliberation intention to cultivate that particular requirement.  It comes to support the more deliberate intention -- to solve a well-defined problem.  But the manner in which one achieves all that, is what matters even more -- and that's what many never learn, much to their regret, and eventual doom.

It's all the little things one accomplishes -- and not the few and rare big things one usually focuses on as landmark achievements.  But all the little things, added up over time, is a mountain dwarfing any singular achievement -- no matter how famous or infamous one hopes to become.  That is the clear message that all of life is telling one -- pay attention to the little things, the details -- for that is what distinguishes the great from the small.

The opposite of this approach, are the many who insist on telling life what to do, and how everything should turn out, regardless of their individual effort and attention to any part of life.  They merely want the results -- regardless of doing anything right to obtain them.  They think wanting it badly enough, is all that is required to achieving and obtaining anything, and predictably, are sadly disappointed when they realized that is not enough -- and think it is useless and too late to go back to the beginning and learn those things.  That's only the task of young people -- they think, rather than that is what young people do that keeps them young.

What makes them "old," is refusing to learn anything anymore -- but instead, telling life and everybody who will still listen to them, how life should be and turn out.  And so life batters and bruises them until they listen -- or simply continues to batter and bruise them the rest of their lives because they will not listen and learn anything more.  That is the hard way to go -- but many insist on it.  It is no accident that they look that way -- of living a hard life that ages them before their time.

They will even insist that nothing more can be learned -- especially from life because it has betrayed them at every turn.  But life is the greater, the sum of all things, and not one, no matter how great and famous they aspire to be, demanding that they alone, should tell life and everyone else, how it ought to be.  Life doesn't work that way.  It is a concert, and not any one person's exclusive solo -- no matter how the reporters want to make it seem so.  The world is not that way -- no matter how much one would like everyone to think what they tell them to.  That is the lesson of the ages.

As Long As You Get It Right Eventually

Few get it right on the first try -- especially on the monumental undertakings.  Usually it requires many attempts to get it working in the first place -- especially if it hasn't been done before.  Of course it is very easy to do the same old thing over and over again -- but doing something different, and new, requires practice and persistence to get it right -- when it's never been done before.  And that's what one wants to do in life -- accomplish what they've never done before.

It doesn't have to be climbing Mt. Everest and all those cliched bucket list entries.  It can be different things for different people -- and will be, depending on what is really important, significant and necessary.  Most people don't have the luxury of having everything in their life in order so that they can do what is purely arbitrary in their lives.  That only happens in schools -- where the arbitrary is made to seem as important as the significant.  In real life, all that matters is the truly significant -- and learning what that is.  Seldom does one know from the very beginning.

One invariably learns that with each attempt -- what is successful, yet what is still not.  For many, that is good enough, and all they settle for -- the first whiff of success, and not refining and fine-tuning the perfection -- yet at some point, realizing that is good enough, but not before.  Where individuals draw that line determines their quality of life with each iteration.  For those who are improving, it's never the same -- they are doing something different, to break new ground.

To the untrained (undiscriminating) eye, everything seems the same -- because they don't know what to look for, and at.  They see only the gross movement, and not the fine -- which makes all the difference in every outcome.  It is what is known as the follow-through -- when most have stopped long ago, and some have already quit and gone home.  All those people know, is that they got home on time.

Those who go on to be ultimately successful, are those who are the last to leave -- leaving no stone unturned in their quest to discover all that can be discovered.  That is what drives them -- and not the clock.  And it doesn't matter how many times they get it wrong -- they keep trying to get it right, and that is what matters.  That's how they lives their lives -- to the very end.

That may mean reinventing life as they've come to know it -- but survival and thriving is much more important than maintaining whatever status quo is now failing.  Life is not permanent; it is dependent on the successful adaptations one makes all their lives, every single moment.  There is no happily forever after -- but happily for each and every moment won anew.  That is the best that can be done.