Don't Ask What Time Your Shift Is Over

There’s an Ethiopian story about a woman who could not get her stepson to like her. She went to a medicine man, who told her to prepare a spell made from three whiskers of a lion. So the woman went to the wilderness with a bag of food and waited. After a week, a black-maned lion came and ate some food she put on the ground. After two weeks, he was eating out of her hand. After a month, he was docile enough for her to clip three of his whiskers.

The woman returned to the medicine man, who promptly threw the whiskers in the fire. “What are you doing?” she cried. “Don’t you know how much patience, delicateness, and hard work it took to get those whiskers?” “Exactly,” the medicine man replied. “So now you know the secret to winning your stepson’s love.”

We tend to forget that the effort is the most important part. On my last retreat, I really saw this: how my mind resists putting in the hard work to train itself. Some old pattern of fear or regret or insecurity would arise, and I’d hear a voice inside me say, “This again? I should be past it by now.” But what I emerged from the retreat with was a deeper, wiser voice that says: “Life is hard work, Paul. Don’t expect it to be otherwise, and it will be joyful.”

Don’t ask what time your shift is over. There’s really nothing on the other side. Technology may trick you into thinking that the answers you seek can be found by typing something into a search bar or asking ChatGPT, but that’s data, not guidance. The real “answers” are the qualities inside you that you develop every time you cultivate effort, patience, determination, and kindness.

In the end, wisdom is not something we know. It’s a heightened perspective we cultivate over and over again. Like climbing a mountain: the higher you climb, the more you see. So keep on climbing.