Not everything happens all by itself. Not everything gets done in a jiffy. In life, things don’t happen that way. There is a process and a timeframeto most of the things that happen in this world. Sometimes, we have to wait with patience and sometimes we have to pay a heavy price to get results. That is the kind of price we pay for transformation.
You may be fond of grapes. You may like the look of a bunch of grapes. But unless those grapes are harvested from vineyards, crushed, pressed, fermented, clarified and aged, you cannot get wine for bottling. The grapes have to go through this grind to turn into wine.
Similarly, it takes donkeys’ years for graphite to turn into diamonds. It takes millions of years for stones to turn into graphite within the earth’s crust under extreme heat and pressure that cause carbon atoms to crystallise into diamonds. Diamonds have to go through this arduous and long windingprocess to become what they are. You cannot skip any part of the process and yet achieve the end result.
Seeds grow day and night. They cannot take rest. They have to follow this process till they germinate and turn into plants. Only when the plants grow up and mature can we hope to harvest the fruits of those plants.
Oilseeds are pressed to get oil. You cannot get oil without pressing the oilseeds. That is a great lesson in life. You cannot achieve anything without following the due process.
So, if you are being crushed; if you find yourself under pressure; if you find yourself caught up in undue delays; if you find yourself groping in the dark, trust the process. You may be in a powerful state of transformation!
Our path may be strewn with stones. There might be many stumbling blocks along the way. The path might be difficult but there’s light at the end of the tunnel. It is with this hope and trust in the process that we move forward in our life.
This is the wisdom of the popular Buddhist monk from Vietnam, Thich Nhat Hanh, who popularized mindfulness in the West and returned to his motherland to spend the last days of his life in meditation.
