Only One Step

When I first read this week's quotation, from Seneca, I was discouraged. It reads: "What you take for the summit is only one step."

I thought, "Bother (or a less printable equivalent) - my work is never done. Why even try?"

But then I thought again, and saw it in a different way - that our journey through life is made up of only one step, followed by another and another... and then, somehow, we get to where we're going.

And then rest, re-evaluate and start the whole process over again! So the message I'd like to take from Seneca is that although we can only take one step at a time, each one is important, and each one moves us on in our lives. Sometimes, we may feel that it is "two steps forward, one step back", but hey! That is still progress.

And if we feel we have hit rock bottom, as happens to everyone at some point (for me it was the Summer of 2013, when I had my first and only alcoholic blackout and realised that if I didn't quit, the only way onward was down), then we can choose a different direction, and start to move on again.

For me, the "one step" was quitting drinking for good on 2nd September 2013.  I have not had an alcoholic drink since. Alcoholics Anonymous and other Twelve Step programmes  also recognise the importance of the "one step at a time" way of living. The important thing is being brave enough to make that one step, over and over again.

Each of us has an opportunity every day to make another step in the direction we're going. And can choose to make it - or not. But when we choose Life, the onward steps will always be for good.