Step by Step by Step

Taking small steps on the way to accomplishing a goal is so boring. Dramatic changes are more satisfying, at the moment. Dramatic changes are just more interesting. Incremental changes are tedious. Making little sustained changes is difficult.

Big things happen through a myriad of little steps. The money guru, Dave Ramsey, has made a career of telling people to take baby steps in correcting their financial problems. He lays them all out step by step by step. You can’t read his book and have a quick fix by morning, but you can have a fix. It will just take a lot of time and discipline and self sacrifice.

Noah built the ark, Moses led the Israelites, Jesus built the kingdom, not through a flurry of dramatic lightening bolts, but through small steps. Board after board after board, step after step after step, person by person by person, they slowly moved to the goal that was set for them. It is not the stuff of a Hollywood movie. Forty years is a long time to wander the desert. Frustration and disillusionment were companions of these slow changes.

Recently, I participated in a week of self awareness. Through different activities suggested by an online group, I examined the impact my life has, day in and day out, on the planet. I looked at how much trash I create and how much energy I use, among other things. I was surprised by the result. I have a tendency to try to tread lightly on the earth. It comes less from a geo-political agenda and more from being raised with the practical values of a midwest farmer’s daughter and an eagle scout camper.

“Always leave a place cleaner than you found it,” was a cardinal tenet in my formative years. Tidy up the public restroom, pick up litter, take out any trash you bring into the wilderness and pick up someone else’s to add to yours on the way out. We are all responsible for doing our part and a little bit more. Leave everything better than you found it.

So I kept track of all of the trash I generated in one day. I didn’t just think about it; I kept it aside for the day so that I could see it all in the end. I saw all of the bits and pieces of paper and plastic that couldn’t be composted and the pieces that couldn’t or wouldn’t be recycled. I was surprised. I knew my first way to skip creating trash was to use a mug for my coffee at work rather than a styrofoam cup, but then I added sugar to my coffee and was left with two little empty packets and a tiny plastic stirrer. During the course of the morning I ate two, ok three, bite sized candy bars and was left with the wrappers. The list went on bit by bit, piece by piece. What I thought was treading lightly was not. I built a little stock pile of trash and most of it was created because it was convenient to the moment.

It is so tempting to think of it as no big deal. It was only two fists full, or maybe a shoebox full of trash. Truthfully, it would have been more if I hadn’t been keeping track which made me more conscientious. While little steps can be the answer to big problems, little steps in the wrong direction can be the cause of big problems. A little bag of trash a day for one person, on one day is not a big deal; a bag of trash a day for eighty years for 300 million people is more of a problem. One unkind statement from a parent can be no big deal; a childhood full of insults is a problem. All of the little pieces add up to something significant.

It so boring, day in and day out, to do the right thing, to make the sacrifice and effort to stop being such a glutton with resources, to stop indulging bad habits. Gluttony is not a popular concept to talk about. It’s popular to practice gluttony, but not so popular to tag it as such. I’ve noticed that people will go to greater lengths to justify their gluttony than they will to correct it. People go to greater lengths to justify all types of unkind, inconsiderate and selfish habits than to correct them. To correct it would take baby steps and those are inconvenient and boring. Those steps require self denial and sacrifice. While we like to tell other people that is what they should do, it’s a bummer to have to practice it ourselves. It’s the whole speck in my brothers eye while there is a plank in my own situation. (If any one of us thinks we don’t suffer from some form of gluttony and self indulgence at the sacrifice of others, then we are suffering from the further sin of arrogance.)

Spiritual growth is incremental. Relationship growth is incremental. Raising children is incremental. Reducing the growth of landfills is incremental. Just about anything worth doing is best done step by sacrificial step. Step by step by step we can make changes in the right direction. Taking the long view is the wiser course, but, boy, is it the harder one.

Peace,
Michelle