The Long And The Short

Little Granddaughter stands on the bars of the gate.

Thirteen bullish and uncertain bovines skuffle in front of us.

'Hello cows,' she says, and blows from her nose as they do. One licks her shoe and is reprimanded. It looks at the floor: poor socially awkward bullock.

Today this child's confidence in life has caused a collision with the garden table. She remembers to run around it after this, but she runs, undaunted. We sprint round the currant bushes until dizziness knocks her over. Up she gets, panting, covered in grass.

'Again!'

Until Grandad picks her up to show her the bullocks in the field opposite. Then it's 'Oh wow. See cows? Come on Grandad. Nam-ma! Where's a doggle? Oh, come on: see cows.'

Not all of the words in her barrage are legible: it doesn't matter, because it's enough to get us to the field gate.

All the time I have been frowning over spreadsheets and scribbling marketing notes and biting my fingernails: oh, Nam-ma! All you needed to do was run into a table. Point at the cows. Don't fret if the short run doesn't get you right where you want to be. It’s the start of the right path.

'Don’t aim at success — the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run—in the long run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.'

Victor Frankl