Chinese Bamboo

I was watching a video of Les Brown. A motivational speaker from a time when, well, a long time ago.

He said this amazing thing about the Chinese Bamboo and then I looked it up on Google. It seems when you decide to cultivate the Chinese bamboo for the first season nothing grows. All you see is barren land, the way it was before you put anything into it. You need to, however, keep watering it and fertilizing it for another year. And still! at the end of the second year, you still see nothing on the surface. For the entire duration. Every day. You need to keep on diligently watering and nourishing the ground because you have for some godforsaken reason decided to grow Chinese bamboo!

And now it gets worse. The Chinese bamboo takes four frustrating years to break the ground.

For four long years you are watering, nourishing and fertilizing barren land or at least so it seems, to anyone and everyone who sees you at the task.

Some might think you've lost it, many others will voice their opinion on how you are wasting your time and effort for an eternity and have nothing to show for.

Now here the amazing thing about this stubborn, patience testing Mr. Bamboo. Once it breaks the ground after a gestation of four years, within the first season itself, the bamboo grows a massive eighty feet. Almost the entire adult size. EIGHTY FEET! in one year.

The point to ponder on, is did it grow that massive size in the one season that it was shooting towards the sky, or did the growth originate over the four years of diligent and disciplined nurturing? Aren't our goals, and targets very similar to this? Would that shoot have even broken the surface if it weren't watered, and tended to, with unquestioning patience?

For the fitness freaks here. The rest and nutrition that follows all the grunting and pushing in the gym is what results in an admirable self.
For the sports nuts, the numerous hours you put in perfecting a shot, getting your footing right, training in solitude in the mud and grime results in that brief stellar performance applauded by many.

For the suit and tie donning robots, the entrepreneurs and hopeless dreamers, how you tend to your goal when no one's watching you, with nothing on the balance sheet and no swanky office yet to show for, through the storm of doubting and questioning looks results in something worthy of praise and admiration from those very disbelievers.

Now that you are done reading this. Pick up that bucket and go water your bamboo.
(yuck, that sounds cheesy)