A little at a time.

I was captivated by the light shining through the trees along the very narrow path on my walk. This little narrow path stretches out before me no room for more that one person so single file walking is the order of the day. From joining the path until the turn is exactly one mile in length.

That is one way of looking at the path but not the only way to look at it. Along the path, there are a number of points where a track from another path comes in and joins this one. So this stretch can be easily taken in smaller stages rather than thinking of the mile yet to come. it can be made even simpler by allowing the eye to dwell for a moment on the little river that runs parallel with it. Another thing is to listen to the variety of many birds that are always competing in song. Or there is that busy little red squirrel seeking some of the food it stored away before the turning of the weather. 

I have had three people saying to me in the last few days that they wished that they could paint the beautiful things of nature they see day in and day out. My answer is always the same. "Then do it. Everybody can paint." I am often then faced with the other familiar comment. "I cannot even draw and never have been able to." My answer to this is always the same again, "Of course you can, just give it a try."

So let me return to the path depicted above. Let me tell you something else about this beautiful little path. It can be painted using no more than five colours. One of the biggest mistakes made by those who would love to paint but say they cannot is complicating the task by making it too complex with too many colours.

You cannot draw? Then start simple. Look at that tree standing almost in the centre? Start with that, two straight lines not even a side branch and three colours one dark and two light. Simple is it not? Once you can paint one it gets simpler to paint others. 

It is like life. We complicate things and make what is not difficult seem like a nightmare. We fret not about the next two minutes or the next ten steps but about the next week or the rest of the month. The bigger the period we stretch our thought the tougher life gets to be. 

I met a lady the other day who in a conversation, after my saying it was so good to be alive, said that we all had to die at some time and she was afraid of that thought. Now she had a point but hopefully, it will not be today or in the next hour so why spoil that moment by thinking of something we have little or no control over.

We have a marvellous ability to take something that could be simple and making it very difficult. 

I suspect that some art teachers have much to answer for. Every one I ever had trying to teach me always set me a task I could never manage with a large selection of blocks of cheap watercolour paint. I detested art lessons and could never draw or paint and always belied it would always be that way. There were some fellow pupils who could, strangely most of them no longer do and here I am talking to you about doing it.

The great sage I try very hard to follow put it this way. "Tackle difficulties when they are easy. Accomplish great things when they are as yet small. Handle what is going to get rough when it is still in a smooth state." Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching. (my own translation.)

It is like life all will go well if it is kept simple and a stage at a time.

Have a wonderful day go on try my little tiny challenge.