Step by Step c".)

As kids we jumped up and down the stairs. Whoever can notched the highest number of steps in a jump won. Whoever got down from the highest step won too. One time, while attempting to outdo the other kids, my knee hit a step...then kablaaag!...I fell hard on the floor.

 

As I was crying, my father consoled me and said, "When you want to go to the top, you don't make a jump or you will only be hurting yourself. The stairs have steps. Take one step at a time."

It sounded so simple but true. There are no shortcuts. Life is filled with stages of raduality. The human person, for instance, goes through infancy, childhood, puberty and adolescence before reaching maturity. In our education, we move from nursery to kinder, from grade school to high school, college to graduate school.

 

We learn first the ABC to be able to write, the do re mi, to be able to sing. We must know first the addition and subtraction, the multiplication and division, before we can proceed to Algebra. Each stage is unique, and a preparation to another. A process is a series of stages. Cut it short and we are bound to fail. Discard one and we cannot take the next stage. Life is a succession of events. To live each one is to enjoy. There is no such thing as a big leap -- only small ascending steps.

 

The problems arise when we become impatient with the process. We circumvent the process to get the immediate results. We become result-oriented people. We don't care if we hurt ourselves and the feelings of others as long as things get done. Results become more important than persons. We strain ourselves beyond our capacity, often at the expense of others, in order to achieve what we want.

This makes us unhappy. We miss the fun of doing things according to our realistic pace. This makes us insecure. We always feel that others can do better than us.This leads to self-pity. We took much than we what we can normally handle, and when we fail, we feel that we are unjustly criticized. This makes us less appreciative. We may treat people with kindness because we use them for our own selfish ends.

 

The process-oriented people are happy, sensitive and at peace with themselves. They know how to take one problem, one plan, one moment at a time. They know that they cannot everything at once. Unnecessary worries are avoided because there is always the next day. In fact, they are likely to be successful persons because they focus on an issue at hand. And because they love people, they produce the best results.

 

My father used to tell me, "A person who is in a hurry bogs down." Well, a man can only do what he can do today.There will be another day. The next time we climb a stairway, let us take it step by step. Stairs are made that way.

 

Life is hurdled one day at a time.