“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two, ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”
These lines are from Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises.
How often do you notice that something “suddenly” happens, and it demands your immediate attention? We spend a lot of time on the urgent, on the suddenlies. Suddenlies get the spotlight, the media loves suddenlies. The urgent, the immediate, the vital, the pressing, weighty, critical thing that needs us to pay attention. The thing that possibly makes us fight, or flee, or freeze.
But nothing really every happens suddenly. Usually, the suddenly happens gradually. We just didn’t pay attention to the gradual thing. The gradual wasn’t urgent and didn’t need our immediate concern; well, it didn’t until suddenly…it did.
When we really look at where we’re at, I think that most of us probably find that it makes sense. All the little things done every day create the reality of now. These gradual things, consistently executed, will get us somewhere. The cool thing is, if we want, we can choose where that somewhere is.
On purpose – gradually, then suddenly.
