In my last post I wrote about the importance of “Taking the Long View” by which I mean, not allowing yourself to get caught up in short term thinking, such that you are unable to imagine adding to your life those things that take a long time to master. I believe that this is an important idea especially since we live in a world that seems to constantly bombard us with the notion that we “can have it all”, and we “can have it all right now”. This of course is false, as we intuitively know that most things take time to achieve. Even so, it is difficult to live outside that system. Taking the long view can help with that, I think.

My intention is to try to reconcile the importance of taking the long view with the equally important need to create short term goals so that the long view does not become so distant that we become discouraged when it seems like minimal progress is made towards it. Before I do that however, I want to pause and write a bit more on “the long view”.

I am currently in Europe and it is impossible to spent time here without taking some time to consider the long view. It is everywhere that one goes. Just this morning I went out for a run along a beautiful forest trail that passed by the ruins of a castle that was originally constructed in 1120 AD. As I stopped to consider all that had transpired in that castle over the past, almost 900 years, I tried to imagine what it must have been like. How many people had come and gone during the time of this castles’ life? How long did it even take to build this structure?

One thing that really stands out here is that people seem to understand (better than we do) that it takes time to create things. Cathedrals are built not in months or years but in decades and sometimes centuries. Gazing at the intricacy of the stone work, it is inconceivable to think about how long it look to carve each piece. The glory was in doing the work well. The beauty was in creating the art. This is a far cry from our current culture that demands speed even if quality and beauty is sacrificed.

While here I had the opportunity to spend time in the Charles Dickens Museum, created in London in one of his former houses. As I type this blog, quickly and easily on my computer, I have to stop and think of Dickens, sitting at his desk, writing books (sometimes to a length of over 800 pages) using quill, inkpot, and thick paper. Oh the time that this must have taken. Yet I wonder if the quality of writing is somehow connected to the speed of the writing. And I wonder if I would even attempt to write these days if I had to write so slowly. It truly makes one pause and reflect.

One of the challenges I think we have is that when we think (or read) about historical events we tend to consider those events in the short space of time that it takes to read about the account. That gives us this false sense of time that makes it seem like these events happened quickly when in fact they took a very long time indeed. Coming to Europe helps me to reacquaint myself to the long view of history and makes me want to slow down somehow and do things right.

Which leads me back to the idea that we need some shorter term goals to keep moving forward on things when we know that what we are working on will take a long time to complete. Thinking again of Charles Dickens, I am reminded that he set aside each morning exclusively for writing, and that most (if not all) of his books came out first as short chapters (they were called serials) that were printed in the newspaper before they were bound into a complete book. Without knowing for sure, my guess is this is one of the ways that he set for himself an achievable goal as he worked his way to that 800 page tome. I need to be constantly reminded of this. Today, as I think about the “long view ideas” that I would like to achieve in my third act, I need to set a much smaller target that will give me that sense of accomplishment along the way. By doing so, I just might get to that “imagined future”.

Onward…..