“Life is a marathon, not a sprint. There is a lot to learn, but you don’t have to learn it all today.” A mentor first told me this years ago, and another reminded me of itmore recently. For a long time, I feared that I only had a very limited time here, in this life. It created a sense of urgency and anxiety, resulting also in information overload. I found myself charging ahead, wanting to grab up every bit of knowledge that I could, only to burn out and lose the sense of wonder that came with learning.
The world is an exciting, big, exhilarating place. There is so much to see, do, and learn, but no school, no job would expect me to go in knowing all there is to know. What they want to know is, what can I do now and are you willing to work and learn more? There is no timeline, no set deadline to my life that I know of, and I don’t think I’d want to know if there was one. All I am expected to do right now is the best I can. I, as we all do, have a lot going for me already.
The sense of urgency I felt took all the fun out of it. It’s the same urgency I feel with a deadline looming at school, feeling overwhelmed by the size of it. We are taught that when we set goals, we should also set a deadline to when they will be accomplished. That doesn’t mean that we should be so focused on the size of the goal when it needs to be done that we lose the excitement when we make even the smallest step forward, eating the proverbial elephant one bite at a time. Slow down, there’s no rush, enjoy the jog and buon apetito.
