What I Saw On My Walk Today... Persistence

 

"Success is the sum of small efforts,

repeated day in and day out."

– Robert Collier 

I am eating a whale.

Last March, this humungous limb fell in my side yard. It was larger than many of the trees on our property. We had a tree guy come out and he quoted a price of $800 to get rid of it.

About that time, my gym shut down due to the pandemic. So, lacking access to my regular fitness equipment, I grabbed a little bow saw from my shed and started whittling away on the smaller branches and off-shoots and hauling them down to the street.

The thing about a big project like that is that it seems so daunting, overwhelming, impossible. And so very time-consuming.

Every day you do a little more, and the progress looks minimal. It seems like a complete waste of time. So much effort, not much noticeable result.

But I kept at it. Day after day, I kept sawing.

How do you eat a whale?

One bite at a time.

I sawed and sawed, and a month or so later, I’d cleaned out all the smaller branches.

I sawed and sawed, and six weeks later got rid of the mid-sized branches.

I sawed and sawed, eventually getting a larger, heavier bow saw to tackle the big stuff that’s left.

I’m still sawing.

I’m still hungry.

Whale, anyone?