Upward

Have I mentioned that I live on top of a hill? A lot of places in Cincinnati are on top of hills, of course, and I live in one of them. Some of the ways up are steepish, others not so much. All of them are sweaty.

There are some advantages to all these hills, of course.

So it was that one day I had gone for a bit of a ramble round and was returning home via the steepest of the possible directions from my house. The hill before mine is not as high, but from the top of it I looked across to see that not only was I not level with the top of the next hill, but also that the top of the hill was obscured by trees, which made it look even worse than it really is. As I headed down and the next hill loomed ever larger, it continued to look steeper the closer I got to the bottom, and it was almost hard to believe this was the same hill I've been easily up and down dozens of times.

Guess what made the hill flatten out and not look so awful? Going up it, of course. Tackling something up close, taking it step by step and inch by inch, is rarely so insurmountable as trying to take in the whole thing at once. (Alas, those times when up close really is worse--well, that's why we have chocolates and friends. Friends with chocolates, if at all possible.) As Samwise Gamgee so wisely put it, "It's the job that's never started as takes longest to finish." And a hill will never get smaller from standing at the bottom staring up at it.

I'm just going to go apply this thought to as many things as possible before I forget again.