Steps

It is Winter here in New England. The snow has been falling. There are hills of frozen snow all over the place. Life goes on.

A major water-sewer project will be coming to our sedate street in a month or so. A 15-foot trench will be dug to lay a new piping system. It is hard to envision how it will all work out. 

I listened attentively to the calm tones of a supervising engineer at a recent civic association meeting. She is a petite woman who speaks of huge construction equipment with a practiced matter-of-fact tone. A citizen says his brick house is shaking with nearby work. She sighs a matter-of-fact answer which does not placate or reassure.

I was reminded that the big things in life require a certain amount of this attitude to be accomplished successfully without undergoing unnecessary emotional turmoil and apprehension. Everything, no matter how massive, can be broken down to small steps with practice. The one-day-at-a-time approach to rehabilitation also applies to construction. 

I have faced my share of apparent mountains in my life. Mountains of prejudice. Mountains of change. Mountains of trauma. Mountains of disease. Each one was scaled one step at a time, sometimes consciously so and sometimes not. The wisdom of age is the understanding that it is best to be fully conscious when scaling a mountain. This wisdom comes with crawling out of the occasional unforeseen crevice. 

Taking conscious steps every day in the direction of a preferred quality of living is a form of mental and physical health. It is part of what I call humanist practice. This requires the development of self-knowledge and internal honesty. The application of these characteristics to daily decisions and behaviors is the key to what some call "mindfulness".