“The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it.” (Arnold H. Glasgow)

Recently, my youngest found a bird nest with an egg in it. I love birds, nests and imagining the possibilities in an unhatched egg and looked forward to checking the egg’s progress (from a distance) in the coming days—watching for a baby bird to hatch—with my son. I explained the plan and reminded him to leave the nest and egg alone so that nature could continue its course. He provided nest-and-egg updates for the next several hours until an “accident” occurred: the nest, and the shattered remains of what had once been an egg, lay on our front porch. My son attempted to blame the tragedy on a “strange bird that appeared out of the sky and then mysteriously disappeared” (coincidentally, never to be seen or heard from again after moving the nest and cracking the egg open) but the real culprit was my impatient six year old!

Impatience. Patience. The potential threat as well as the key to the success of an unexpected life. I remember thinking, when thrust into my unexpected life of extreme losses in every category, how is this all going to work out? How will any of this ever be made right? How will it be possible to ever be happy again? And the question of timing—when, how soon, how long will it take—was an even bigger unknown. Yet none of those questions are answered, or ever can be, without the important quality of patience because, “…all things are difficult before they become easy.” (Saadi)

It takes patience to master the difficult before it becomes easy. But with enough patience, every challenge can become a triumph, every time. Patience is the key: the key to endurance, the key to success, the key to triumph, the key to happiness. The key to everything? Patience. In fact, patience is genius.

Yes, “Genius is eternal patience.” (Michelangelo)

He ought to know.