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The Key To Everything

Date: May 21, 2012  Author: Andrea Merriman

“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.

The Key To Everything

Date: February 17, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

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

When I was 3-4 years old I learned an additional lesson for the unexpected life. It came from another feathered friend, a duck.

At the time, my family lived in Arizona on a golf course. One of my favorite activities was to visit the ponds on the golf course and feed bread to the ducks. I loved the ducks! In fact, I loved them so much I wanted one of my own. Every time we fed the ducks, I wanted to take an egg home with me.

My mom always kept me carefully away from the nests, but one day our cousins from Utah were in town visiting, and my cousin Athena and I decided that together, we were going to get a duck! We rode my bike to the pond, stealthily crept to a nest when the mother duck was swimming, grabbed an egg and pedaled home as fast as my little legs could pump! The whole way home I felt like we’d robbed a bank.

And then there was the threat of dogs. We were sure if a dog caught a whiff of the egg in our possession, the dog would be after us too! Home we raced, hearts pounding, legs pumping, dodging dogs and other dangers in the quest for a duckling. Finally, we arrived back home and I snuck a table knife from the kitchen to help us crack the egg open.

Imagine our disappointment when we cracked the egg and out came…absolutely nothing.

I was stunned! I remember wondering how an egg that was supposed to contain a baby duck actually contained nothing different than the eggs my mom scrambled for breakfast.

It was one of my earliest lessons in life. And patience. It showed me, for the first time, that as much as you’d like to, you can’t rush life or its challenges OR its blessings. How many times I have impatiently wished I could fast forward through the hard stuff I never expected to face or planned on being a part of my life, unexpected or otherwise.

Then I remember my first failed effort to attempt to do that and realize, again, that  in life you can’t always go over or under or around it. You can only go through it. And you can’t get birds by smashing eggs. You have to be patient. You have to wait for things to hatch. And you have to have faith.

“Faith is putting all your eggs in God’s basket, then counting your blessings before they hatch.” (Ramona C. Carroll)

Hatch…Or Go Bad

Date: February 16, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“I don’t, for the record, have a Tweety Bird fetish.” (Brian Lamb)

But I have enjoyed some special birds.

Once, when I lived in my Colorado neighborhood, an owl took up residence on our front porch. He stayed with us for about 3 weeks and kept a close eye on us–rotating his head all the way around to look at a us, never missing a thing! It was very unexpected. And very typical of life–unexpected.

But the creatures I had the most dealings with for the 16 years I lived in my home were two particular birds: a sparrow and a robin.

The sparrow took up residence every year in the wreath that hung on my front door. Kind homeowner that I was, every fall when she flew away for the winter, I removed the nest and cleaned the bird mess off my front door and secretly hoped she wouldn’t return. But every year she did. When she arrived, she immediately set to work laboring long and hard to build a little nest in the wreath. Then she’d lay her little eggs there. And then she had to endure trying to protect her eggs as our front door opened and closed, and people came and went, throughout the day every day. I’m sure she never expected to live amid such turmoil!

But I have to give her credit for not only enduring her circumstances, but for never giving up; for returning each year, year after year, to do the same thing. It inspired me that she always made it–she built her nest, raised her babies, and survived the winter season to return and do it again.

The unexpected life requires emulation of the sparrow. You don’t expect what you’re handed, you never plan to live amid turmoil, you can’t control much of what you experience, but you can endure. That’s what the sparrow did. And she taught me you can do it year after year, for however long it takes, until you triumph over your challenges.

The robin took up her real estate in the pear tree outside my dining room window. I could stand in my dining room and look out the window and down into her nest. I got to enjoy a bird’s eye view without ever disturbing my bird-friend! She slaved to build her nest; she laid her eggs in it–beautiful, tiny blue eggs; and then she sat on them through rain and shine, sleet and heat and snow. Many times, I watched her huddled in her nest, her wings wrapped around her for protection against the heavy, wet, thick, Colorado spring snow that pounded her little nest relentlessly. But she, too, never gave up despite the heavy burdens that landed on her. And she still managed to not only hatch her eggs and raise her baby birds, but she sang while she did it. Year after year.

When my unexpected life began, I remember feeling a lot like that robin: burdened, huddled, trying to survive the temporary misery amid heavy snow.

The unexpected life requires emulation of the robin, too. Endure, and by virtue of never giving up, eventually conquer the things that are heaped upon you. Hang in there, eventually spring will come. Your burdens will lift (or you’ll have become strengthened and able to bear them) if you don’t give up. And for goodness sake, sing while you do it! There’s a reason Snow White whistled while she worked!

It has been two years since my last interactions with the robin and the sparrow. And now I realize something else, probably the most important thing of all. Thank goodness for the unexpected life, despite its turmoil, trauma, challenges and burdens. Because it forces us out of our shells and out of our nest, we have to fly or fail; hatch or go bad.

Growth is always a choice. In most cases, so is triumph. I love those little birds and their eggs that reminded me of that.

“It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird; it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are all like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.” (C.S. Lewis)

Thank goodness for the unexpected life that keeps things fresh, and that helps us hatch and grow beyond being just ordinary, decent eggs.