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Newsletter - July 2024

​​Taking The Next Step...

 

We likely all know the quote “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” It’s a quote from Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, chapter 64. For me, it’s a great reminder of two things. First, that we won’t get anywhere until we move. Second, that it’s up to us to do the moving. But recognizing the truth of this does not necessarily make taking steps easy. It can still be hard. Why? And is there anything we can do about? This newsletter explores some answers.

 

I don’t know about you but I like plans. Building castles in the air is fine; but if you want to build them on the ground then it helps to have plans. You need the equivalent of blueprints. You need lists of things that need to be done and realistic timelines in which to do them. You need to figure out logical sequences so that first things get done first, and you don’t find yourself surprised by what could have been predicted. As I see it, without plans your castles either won’t get built at all, or they will get built very inefficiently.

 

However, plans alone don’t build castles. Taking steps is what builds castles. (I think my metaphors might be getting a bit mixed.) The point is there is a time to stop planning and a time to start taking steps. And, for me, that time usually comes before I feel ready for it. That’s what makes it hard.

 

Perhaps I prefer the safety of tinkering with plans to dealing with the reality of whether or not they are actually going to work out. Who knows? But whenever I feel held back by something, I believe that knowing what it is can help me face it. As the saying goes “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” So let’s face it: Why can it be hard to take steps?

 

I think the main reason it can be hard is that we often don’t know what will happen—and we don’t like the uncertainty. After all, taking a step is a moment of truth. Either we move forward or we don’t. Perhaps we will discover there’s an obstacle in the way. Perhaps we will stumble and fall. Perhaps we will simply not move as far forward as we had hoped. There are many possibilities. But the moment we take the step, the list of possibilities whittles itself down to one. Something actually happens.

 

Sometimes we feel the uncertainty would at least be reduced if we could see several steps ahead. To some degree, of course, this is true. In fact, a good plan shows many steps ahead. But there is still a degree of uncertainty associated with each one of them. And, if we’re not careful, we can let this uncertainty hold us back. It’s a bit like seeing a string of traffic lights ahead of you on the road and wanting them all to go green before you pass the first one.

 

We smile at this. Why? Because we all know that while the current light may be green, by the time we get a few lights down the road, one of them will have turned red. That’s not bad luck. It’s not even the result of poor planning. It’s just the way it is. I think there’s only one thing we can do about this—and that is to accept it and move forward anyway.

 

This brings us to the second of the two questions we started with: What can we do about the fact that it can be hard to take steps? As I’ve suggested, I think part of an answer is simply to accept it—and recognize that waiting for a string of green traffic lights is both unrealistic and unnecessary. But I think there’s something else we can do. I think there’s a general truth we can accept that will make any step easier to take. Here it is.

 

The journey of a thousand miles calls for many steps. (In fact it calls for many thousands of them, doesn’t it?) We can plan the steps and even see the first few clearly. But here’s the thing. Take a step, and the view changes. It’s got to change, hasn’t it? If it didn’t, then you wouldn’t have moved forward at all. In fact, if the view remains the same then you haven’t gone anywhere.

 

And now something interesting happens. Sometimes you see exactly what you expected to see. When this happens, we say a project is going “according to plan.” But sometimes you don’t see exactly what you expected to see. Instead, you see something else. Sometimes what happens is that a new step reveals itself. You didn’t see it coming. It wasn’t anywhere in your plan. But it’s there in front of you now. What do you do? Well, you check it out and then—quite possibly—you take it.

 

So here’s what I call the general truth in all this. The next step cannot reveal itself until you take the one preceding it. Stare as hard as you like into the future and you’ll never see it. It will remain hidden. Why? Because you haven’t yet moved forward enough to see it. But it’s there! Regardless of whether or not it’s in your plan.

 

Let’s summarize. There is a time for planning and there is a time for taking steps. Planning does not change the view. Taking steps is what changes the view. And sometimes the view changes to show us something that wasn’t in the plan. Is that what we need to do next? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. But that’s not the point. The point is that we could not have seen it if we had not just taken a step.

 

Well, this newsletter hasn’t drawn much on Lao Tzu’s wisdom, has it? It’s been more of a personal exploration of why I find it can be hard to take steps. But I hope to have shared a general idea as to something we can do about it. In short, if we take a step, we might see something we cannot see now, not even in our best laid plans. The only way to discover what is actually out there is to move forward. It’s not even that we have to take the next step and see—we have to take the next step in order to see. Perhaps what we need to do is simply let our curiosity win out over our discomfort with uncertainty.

 

Oh, one final thought about why it can be hard to take steps. Sometimes the step is simply too big. The solution? Make it smaller. After all, Lao Tzu didn’t say “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single stride” – he said step. You can make the step whatever size you like. What matters is that you’re able to take it.

 

What steps do you find it hard to take? Where are you on the scale that goes from just jumping in and seeing what happens, to planning a project to death, as it were, before taking even the tiniest step forward? What if you take to heart that the view will change when you move forward, and that the new view may include the next step revealing itself? The next step may even turn out to be far simpler than you imagine. That’s enough to make you curious, isn’t it?

 

If you have any thoughts you’d like to share, you can get in touch with me by:

 

Thanks for reading. Please feel free to share this newsletter.

 

Francis

 

IN OTHER NEWS...

 

New book update - Release day is July 16 for my new book There Is No Somewhere Else: Insights from the Tao Te Ching. The e-book is available for pre-order on Amazon now.

 

Synopses and reviews - for There Is No Somewhere Else and In Harmony with the Tao are now on my new website www.francispringmill.com

 

In Harmony with the Tao - is available as an e-book, or as a paperback or hardcover from your nearest independent book store, or from Amazon.com, or from Amazon.ca. As of early March, it's also available as an audiobook (you can listen to a sample), click link below as appropriate:

 

Past newsletters - www.francispringmill.com/newsletter-archive​

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