The-Slight-Edge

is Time on Your Side? 47
There is a natural progression in life, which everyone knew intimately
back in the days when we were an agrarian society. You plant, then
you cultivate, and finally you harvest. Plant,
cultivate, harvest.
In today’s world, everyone wants to go directly
from plant to harvest. We plant the seed by joining the gym, and then get
frustrated when a few days go by and there’s no fitness harvest. Taking recreational
drugs is an effort to go from plant directly to harvest. So is taking steroids to enhance
athletic performance. So is robbing a bank; so is playing the lottery.
The step we keep overlooking (and overskipping!) is the step of cultivating.
And that, unlike planting and harvesting, takes place only through the patient
dimension of time.
Because we are a culture raised on television and movies, we’ve lost track of
time. We don’t understand time any more. I’m not criticizing television and films.
Film is an amazing art form, television is a powerful medium, and in the hands of
true artists, they can both teach us valuable lessons about life. Just not about time.
Through a great film, you can experience the triumph of the human soul over
adversity, the drama of a struggle between doing what’s right and succumbing
to the temptations of the world, a moving encounter between generations, the
flowering of a powerful romance, the struggle and birth of a nation ...
But it all has to be finished in two hours.
Can you imagine a nation being born in two hours? Meeting the person
who will become the love of your life—the dating, courtship, romance, struggle,
triumph, wedding and life thereafter—in two hours? Of course not. We expect
to put forth the effort of a short “training sequence” in a movie and get the same
heroic ending. In a world filled with instant coffee, instant breakfast, instant
credit, instant shopping, instant news and instant information, we have
come dangerously close to losing touch with reality
and believing we have access to instant life.
Where’s the Drama?
It’s not that becoming aware of the Slight Edge will make these critical
choices easier—because they’re already easy! And that, oddly enough, is the
challenge of it. This is not about making tough choices. It’s about making easy
choices consistently.
The problem is, making the wrong choices—the ones that will tilt the Slight
Edge to lean against you instead of in your favor—are also easy choices.