As tasks unfold

Posted on | July 16, 2009 |

Have you ever had the experience of starting a project, completing it, and then realizing that all the time there was another sub-text that was at work that you hadn’t recognized?  Now, if you have time and opportunity, that can be delightful.  You go back and do the task again, refreshing it, so to speak, with the new knowledge.

And sometimes there’s no time and no opportunity.

This happens to me fairly frequently.  I write something and three weeks later I see that what I thought of as a completed idea was, in fact, simply a stepping stone to a larger idea.  Or perhaps I’m dealing with a friend whose situation seems puzzling, and it’s only later than I can see what the real issue is; except now it feels too late to help solve the problem.

I don’t regard this as in any way a failing, although I do sometimes wish I could be more swift off the mark.  Instead I regard it as the nature of things. Recognitions, truths, come slowly.  The difficulty is that in our world people want us to get to the center and solve things right away.

Alexander the Great was once presented with the problem of the Gordian knot - a knot so difficult and complex that no one could untie it. His solution was to draw his sword and cut the rope.  He may have ‘untied’ the knot but he also destroyed the rope, which after all was the whole point of untying the knot in the first place.  Was this genius or shallow pride? As tasks unfold they can show us their mysteries, reveal their riches, and allow us to learn.

A colleague of mine is a medical intuitive.  I’ve witnessed how she would sometimes pronounce (accurately) on the patient’s condition, yet do it in a way that made the patient feel frightened and criticized.  What was better there - the quick, accurate, cruel diagnosis or the slower unfolding?

Perhaps it’s not about ‘the answer’ or the solution. Perhaps it’s always the process that must be honored.

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