Success

Today I am grateful for success.  When we are very young we are taught to work hard and we will be successful.  No one ever told me the road to success wasn’t straight.  I wish they had because I’d have saved a lot of time and money on therapy along the way.  I was nearly lost in some of the hairpin turns and twists.

We open up our early reader and struggle to put together letters, which become words, which become sentences, which become paragraphs, which become stories.  Which become books.  Wow!  That’s a lot of becoming’s.  No wonder some kids cave-in with frustration.

It’s that way with so many things. . .learning an instrument, riding a bike, baking a cake, cutting hair, understanding dreadful new technology. . .all require much learning before success is realized.  But when the notes stop sounding like clunkers, the bike balances under your skill, the cake is yummy, the haircut looks good and you understand enough technology to not throw whatever gizmo frustrates you through a window, the joy of success is palpable.

I witnessed this experience with two five-year-old girls who are learning to swim.  Yesterday they “got it”.  Really got it.  The weeks and months of explaining, trial and error, and repetition clicked.  I could see it as though a spot light was cued to their little wet heads.  The lifeguard could see it.  The parents saw it.  Most importantly, the two girls saw it, felt it, embraced it. 

Success does not happen in a straight line. Yet when it happens, and it WILL happen. . .the divots, twists, and potholes that threatened to derail us along the way, evaporate like snow on a sunny day.