Geology for the Go-getter
or
The Compounding Benefits of Small Actions Over Time
“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together. ”
“From a small seed, a mighty trunk may grow.”
In one of the 20th century's finest cinematic gems, Frank Darabont's The Shawshank Redemption, based on a short story by Stephen King, we find a superb example of the profound effects of small actions over a long period of time. Shawshank is the story of an innocent man, Andy Dufresne, played by Tim Robbins, wrongfully imprisoned for decades, the friendships he develops, his effect on those around him, and his indomitable spirit of survival and hope.
We find out eventually that Andy has spent 19 years slowly digging through the decaying wall of his cell with a tiny pick-ax made for shaping small rocks, each day, emptying the loose dirt and stone in the prison courtyard through holes in his trouser pockets, and covering up the growing cavern in the wall with a rotating assortment of contraband posters. At one point, Morgan Freeman's character, Red, ruminating on his friend Andy's slow and steady flight toward freedom, speaks the following, "Geology is the study of pressure and time. That's all it takes, really. Pressure and time. That and a big g@#d&*n poster."
For years, Andy spent countless hours in the dead of night, quietly chipping away at his captivity, eventually escaping his cell, and then crawling through the prison's main sewage line toward a new life. Red says it best: "Andy crawled to freedom through five hundred yards of shit smelling foulness I can't even imagine, or maybe I just don't want to. Five hundred yards... that's the length of five football fields, just shy of half a mile." This illustrates two key points in our own journey, that efforts sustained long-term can yield dramatic effects, and that at certain points along that path, we may have to get a bit dirtier, have our usual level of comfort upended, to reach our destination.
A Better Understanding
Thankfully, most of us aren't wrongfully imprisoned or physically restrained. But we all have our own prisons. We all have dreams that seem unreachable, or visions that, for the moment, seem too lofty to ever attain. Make no mistake, most of life asks of us a great deal more than we initially believe it will. Most goals require greater focus, more time, greater energy, more resources, further training, more intention. But often what keeps us from our objective is often not a lack of access to resources or time.
Creativity can get us around or through some of this. It's that we don't use this time right. We don't capitalize on the truth behind Red's commentary, that what's needed is the marriage of pressure and time, the union of consistent, focused action over a longer season of life.
Some of this has little to do with apathy, and more to do with an inaccurate grasp of our relationship to time and effort. This struggle is only worsened by the way we live and communicate. Our content-overloaded culture and social media envy, paints for us, an ever-rotating collage of "mountain top experiences," the "living my best life," mentality.
We edit our lives and everyone sees everyone else standing on top of the hill in celebration. We watch slick montages in movies, set to memorable songs, unveiling dramatic change over time, that for us, takes place in a matter of seconds or minutes. A clever cinematic device, but a poor example of life's protracted struggle toward growth, accomplishment, and meaning.
We train ourselves to believe that the end goal is the only point in the journey that holds value, a vile piece of fiction by the way, since it is the path itself that refines us the most, the path that makes up the process by which our character is developed enough to handle what we finally take hold of. We forget that part of our prize, along with our ultimate objective, is the satisfaction we get from walking through the entire process, and how this journey prepares us for our eventual achievement.
“One of the most essential truths of the process of change within us, is that considerable effort over time concentrates the meaning of things. Desiring that all obstacles be removed from our path dissolves the density of life. It dilutes existence.”
Now, I Say...Right Now
We want it now...freaking yesterday in fact. We want to play guitar like Hendrix or Stevie, have a wicked jump-shot like Michael, write like Twain and Dostoevsky, have a body like Arnold, swing the racket like Serena, have the perfect marriage, get the raise and promotion to VP after six months. We want to be perfect right away and despise the work it takes to reach that level, especially when there are so many other things ready to grab our attention.
But most of these things are cheaply gotten, and cheaply held. They require little of us and so we value them only a little. And we grow more and more dissatisfied with our life and our lack of growth in the meantime, even though it is by our own choice that we avoid this growth.
Very few things in life are worth getting if they cost us nothing. One of the most essential truths of the process of change within us, is that considerable effort over time concentrates the meaning of things. If everything was easy, if it took no time at all, we'd "play" with it briefly and toss it aside like so many unloved birthday or holiday gifts. If successful relationships came without effort, relationships would not mean so much to us. They would all be disposable...people would be disposable. But knowing someone deeply and loving someone well takes incredible effort and a lot of time. This goes the same for any skill we want to master or any destination we'd like to reach. Diminishing unnecessary roadblocks is a good thing. But desiring that all obstacles be removed from our path dissolves the density of life. It dilutes existence.
From Here to There
For many of us, and I am certainly in this camp, it isn't what we've done that we regret the most, but what we haven't. One of our greatest strengths is our ability to envision things which don't yet exist, to imagine different narratives, to conceive a better story, to take mere thought and carve out a new reality. But this incredible gift is tempered, if not at times entirely snuffed out by our assumptions, our wrong-headed analysis, and our lack of confidence, not only in ourselves, but in the willingness of existence itself, to allow our new choices to make inroads within the world.
Looking at where we are and contrasting this with where we want to be, is a necessary component we can't get around. It is also a painful one. It draws our hidden perturbations and vulnerabilities to the surface, exposing raw and unsolidified places in us. It reminds us that the vision we have of ourselves is not as accurate as we'd like to believe. But it also clarifies, turns our eyes and our thoughts away from self-medication and distractions toward the center of our being, toward the immovable truths that will fuel our focused movement.
“Life is a series of defining struggles that runs us up against our own essence and against the face of reality until we either change or throw our hands up and let the current take us wherever it flows.”
The Divide
When we think about our goals, the open space between where we are and where we want to be can begin to look like an impassable divide. And if we don't take this path in pieces, understanding the power of small but consistent steps over time, if we choose to see it not as a journey in parts but only in its entirety, it will appear to us an impossible task, an absurd and unthinkable undertaking.
Part of this comes from our frailty, specifically our penchant for wanting everything right now. This tendency is strong enough on its own to leave us unfulfilled. But we usually combine it with the assumption that if we can't accomplish what we want rapidly, or worse, aren't miraculously endowed with uber-talent, it must not be for us, we must not be cut out to have this experience.
This is a lie. But it's one of the easiest to believe. Even in the midst of great opposition, with enough time and pressure, almost anything can be achieved. The question, then, is not "Is our dream worth it?" but "Am I willing?" "Am I willing to walk this out for as long as it takes to bring it to fruition?"
Life is essentially, struggle, albeit often a meaningful, and occasionally beautiful one. But it is a series of defining struggles that run us up against our own essence and against the face of reality until we either change for the better or throw our hands up and let the current take us wherever it flows.
Many of us, especially in the wake of repeated disappointments, come to believe that the capacity within our actions to facilitate considerable growth is not as strong as it really is, that it is somehow exaggerated by those who are simply more gifted or more privileged then we are. The strange and wonderful reality remains, though, that even a minor shift in our behavior can bring about surprising change if we keep it up long enough.
The Power of One Degree
Think about a plane or a ship. If we barely nudge the rudder and point the vessel just a hair left or right, so slight that the movement is nearly imperceptible, nothing seems to happen, not for a long time. But this seemingly insignificant change of direction is compounded over time. Its effects and its potential outcomes multiply the longer we keep pressure on the change.
For a while we won't notice a thing. Our course seems unaltered. Our minor shift from the previous plan seems as if it had little to no effect on anything. But even within an hour, it becomes clear that we are on a different trajectory than the one we'd been travelling not long before. The longer we maintain our new heading, the greater the distance becomes between where we were and where we are now, just like beginning at a single point and tracing two lines with one at a slightly different angle. For a long time they will look nearly parallel. But if we were able to keep tracing, the physical distance between the two lines would grow until we could no longer see the once adjacent line while standing upon the other.
The initial course alteration birthed a new chain of events. But it is the exponential growth rate of the effects of time applied to consistency in a new behavior that magnifies this separation from one path to the other. Now play this out even longer. Think about how these minor changes in your life might unfold, not only over months but years. The longer we maintain our efforts, the more dramatic our milestones become. The more we apply pressure and focus over time, the more noticeable the manifestation of these changes.
The Trouble with Waiting for an Easier Path
Some of us deal with chronic illness and find that we must struggle for every ounce of diminished physical or mental energy available. Many of us are dealing with financial woes, debt, relational strife, professional disappointments, failed investments. Each of these things by themselves is able to derail us. Often, they come in pairs or triplets. And these sizable boulders make concerted effort that much harder to maintain.
There is very little in life that can be accomplished overnight, so to speak. At least not anything of great value. And life will not stop throwing punches our way. They do slow down during some seasons, once in a great while they even seem to back off almost completely. But they will start back up eventually. If we convince ourselves that waiting for life's opposition points to thin out or everything to fall into place before we move further ahead, we'll be waiting until our own funeral, or at least until the potency of the moment and the immediacy of our idea, have diminished to the point where our pursuit becomes nothing but a joyless chore instead of a chore-filled joy... a distinction worth considering.
There is no such thing as perfect. And the weight of existence will not ease up simply because we want it to or think we deserve it. We must continue to make decisions, even in the presence of fear. Nothing cuts fear off at the knees more efficiently than making choices and moving on them. When we do so, we remove some of the anxiety that accompanies the unknown and the theoretical, and fill these spaces with concrete evidence.
Taking Sides
So many of us fall into one camp or the other, either applying pressure toward a plan, but failing to keep it up for the long haul when we don't see dramatic effects soon enough. Or, we spend a lot of time on something, even becoming habitual with it, but we don't apply enough creative pressure. We put in the hours but haven't focused these efforts to a sharp enough point to cut a hole in our present limitations.
In both of these cases the only thing waiting for us is the invitation to regret. It is only when we combine intelligent, focused decision making and new behavior over a greater portion of our lives, while taking into account everything we learn along the way, that we begin to see measurable growth.
In Closing: How Much is it Worth?
Accomplishing anything worth a damn asks a great deal from us. It comes down to our willingness to work and to wait. It asks us to value not only the goal but the process as well, the process that purchases for us, in sweat, pain, and tears, the right and readiness needed to hold onto that which we attain.
So, how much are your dreams worth? Worth enough to dig, to get dirty, worth embarrassing yourself a little, or a lot, worth early mornings and late nights and sacrificing TV time, worth enough to share yourself with others and with the world in your present, fallible, but brilliantly imperfect state? If so, a few of those wild imaginings that keep you awake at night just might leave the realm of dreams and one day draw breath among the living?