My wife had some necklaces that became all intertwined, and she needed to untie them.

I offered to lend a hand and help her, not because she couldn’t do it, but because it was a good chance to recall two good things I learned in life: Untying and doing useless things.

On untying: It was a bright morning in the italian sea coast. It was summer, out in the balcony there were some lemon trees. Each morning we took one lemon and make some tea, even if it was summer.
I remember the flavor of that lemon as if I ate it today.

I was at a friend’s house, spending couple of weeks off, his mom always helped us doing things and one day I had my necklace intertwined by itself.

I tried to untie it but it was useless, I only made it worse.
She came to me and told me that, for this things, you don’t have to rush it.
Take your time, do slow movements, and it’ll sort out.

From there on I always followed her advice when untying things, it always worked, never again I got stuck.

On doing useless things: Company retreat, our first one. An amazing two day settled in a hotel on a city with a nice sea in italy, early summer.

There’s one talk of a psychologist and sociologist. He’s amazing, he knows how to handle people.
For some reason at that time I feel like I’m missing some willpower, so I ask him if he has some ideas.

He told me to try to do some useless repetitive things, like emptying a cup full of toothpicks and putting them back one by one, as slow as possible, for 3 or 4 times.

It worked, but I quickly realized my problem was not about willpower.

In both cases the teaching is much bigger than the actions. We feel it all revolves about time, but time is just a distraction. It’s not time. It’s the fact that we want to rush it, to get it all, but some things to be conquered need time, need patience, need trial and error, many errors in some cases.

It seems about time, but in fact it’s about perseverance.