The fact that anything that needs to be done and deserves to be done takes time is a basic fact of life. Sometimes we forget it: we are in the embrace of desire, the impulse to reach the goal all at once. The care one puts into something is the measure of love and intention, which afterwards, when the satisfaction of getting something done has been forgotten, stays with us as the feeling and sentiment of lasting and persistent pleasure in pride that something good was done, an achievement was made.
The attainment of a goal that is worthwhile has always required delicate yet intensive attention. It requires foresight, deep thought, and persistent action. It requires the capture of information from the depths of mind as well as the environment. It requires dedication so for the repetition of intention through persistent activities, varying as circumstances and the goal require. It requires communication, which itself requires trust building. The attainment of a goal is like the focusing of light by a glass, which at first being irregular and unrefined, focuses the light badly, and creates a blurry image. But the refinement of the glass over time, which is like the concentration of the self, focuses the light, brings the efforts slowly in line with the image, or the goal, we hope to achieve.
In society, there are many directions, intentions, images, and information bits that pull us this way and that way. It shifts our direction and blurs our intention. One day we are certain this one thing needs to be done, but tomorrow a movie and dinner distracted us from the goal. Conversation with friends are the same. Such a matter interests us, and such an item requires our opinion. But the effort when drawn from deep pulls us to focus in the back of the mind on the object that deserves our attention. When in the car we reflected silently on it, when buying a coffee we meditated on its importance, when picking up grocery we see clues revealing themselves in the fine print on the bottle, that is when within the deeps the object in the mind develops its focus and intensity.
When the objective gains force in the depths of ourselves, attention is put onto the thing so much so that without explicit effort, its truth and beauty are revealed, gaining appearance in the water cooler conversation, in the morning chat with neighbors, in the late night whispers with the spouse. It gains force as it makes its appearance, perhaps daily, perhaps specially, but increasingly the meaning and significance starts to take shape through the way it is voiced and thought about, through the many instances when it takes appearance in our daily life.
So it is. Repetition does make perfect, but it is no rote repetition, and rather, it is a natural repeating of focusing on the goal. It is possible that as we reflect and talk about it, its shape would change. While at first, it was imagined that it is some one meaning or some other reality, as it fits into the phenomena of daily life, it morphs slightly this way or that, and relevance has taken to task the sculpting of the at first indistinct form. Increasingly, as time goes on, and as its appearance is appreciated by the new and unexpected, an exciting thing happens. It is commitment without rote force. It is dedication, grown naturally. Just as you cannot force a puppy to love you, but tend to it with love and it returns your love; and just as you cannot force a plant to grow more green leaves, but allow it more fertilizer and the appropriate amount of water, and it shall grow better and more vibrant, so it is too with any small or great goal you may harbor. Protect your dream, and cultivate your dream by letting it make its appearance. Be not scared of criticism or laughter, for often it is made of nervousness, awkward that will may yet realize those impossible things realizable through human action alone.
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