163 – June 12
“The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it open.”—Arnold H. Glasgow
“How come I’m not taller?” cried Little Acorn. “I want to stand tall and straight and reach the skies. Like you!”
“Wait,” whispered the Old Ones, leaning down from their great height. The winds sighed through their rustling leaves.
“But I want to be big now. I shouldn’t have to be little like this. This is no fun!”
The elder trees stood stoically, stretching their long limbs to the skies. “Wait.”
“It’s not fair! How come you get to be so tall, while I’m stuck here on the ground? I’m just as good as you. I should at least have some roots and some limbs!”
“Wait.”
Frustrated and uncomprehending, Little Acorn cried and complained into the long night.
Years passed, and Little Acorn grew. His roots took hold of the rich earth, sending long shoots deep into the rich soil. He quenched his thirst in the rain. His limbs lengthened and strengthened in the sunlight. The sap ran strong beneath his bark.
Still Little Acorn was not satisfied. “But I still can’t reach as high as you!” he whined. “You’re at the top of life and I’m stuck here in the middle. Why can’t I be as tall as you?”
The Old Ones nodded in the breeze and their voices sighed softly on the wind, “Wait.”
Many suns and moons moved across the skies and the eons passed. And one day Little Acorn realized he was the tallest tree in the forest. His life-long dream had come to pass. The birds sang in the sunlight in his topmost boughs. Children played beneath his feet. He could see for miles around and stood proudly with his comrades. Now he, too, was one of the Old Ones.
His joy was complete.
Then he heard a small voice crying on the ground. He leaned down to see who was weeping so piteously. It was his child, Tiny Acorn.
“How come I’m not taller?” cried Tiny Acorn. “I want to stand tall and straight and reach the skies. Like you!”
With an ache in his soul and the wisdom of the ages in his kindly voice, he whispered, “Wait.”
This story is precious to me. I don’t know where it came from. Out of hours and hours of writing pages and pages of this book, flashes came from an unknown source and grew in my mind. I just wrote them down.
Today’s Affirmation:
“I have abundant faith and trust that all my good is on its way to me now.”
Macolm Gladwell, in his book “Outliers”, says that it takes 10 years or 10,000 hours to achieve mastery. Maybe somewhere in the writing of this book, I hit 10,000 hours of writing and stories like this started to appear…
As we grow older, we have better mastery of life, too, because we’ve put in the time. Problems that once looked so large fade – we’ve encountered them and survived them before. We know all we have to do is wait it out, and better days will come behind this one. You’ll be taller soon enough. You’ll be wiser soon enough.
Wait for it.
