Patience
Focus.
Pareto’s principle.
Master one thing.
Build one brick at a time.
So on and so forth on the wisdom of focusing on the significant few rather than the insignificant majority. It’s true, but why is it so difficult?
Primarily it’s our inability to ignore those individuals around us for whom we care and who care for us. We have trouble dissecting their care and concern with their competence in instructing the development of our lives.
I love my family, and on many points where I have strayed they have set me straight. On many occasions where I have squandered my resources they have supported me without question. I have an unfettered confidence in their support and affection for me.
It’s not that I know better than they do, or more than they do. It’s simply that I know who I am and what I must be true to.
This is not to say that they are asking me to be things that are not right, noble, and virtuous; it is that they are asking me to do things that are out of time with who I’ve disciplined myself to be thus far.
I am impatient and irascible. I am egotistical and cold. I am vindictive and cruel.
Or I can be, among many other things.
Yet these are not things that I will presently change, though I know I must in time. The sun of my character is yet rising, and so low is it on the horizon that more shadows are distinctly cast by the dawn than could be discerned in the impartial night.
It is a curious thing to acknowledge that yes, I am wrong and no, I will not change it.
Time makes for some funny circumstances in life. It is not that I don’t want to change it, but more so that it is not the most important thing to change at this moment.
Or what could one say? That in an instant one must be a Saint? In a second attain Nirvana? In a snap become Buddha? All this is known to be folly. For we know well that Rome was not built in a day, but we falter in acknowledging it in day to day life.
I am imperfect, but partially existing, and shall continue to be so. For the moment I shall take the existence Buddha spoke of. I shall be a “stream of becoming which is never being, an illusion of a self which is in truth no self.”
