When I was a child, the very centre of our family’s house was a large tiled stove. It did not only warm the living room. There were pipes for the warm air to reach the first floor as well, connected to the bedroom of the parents, the children’s room, and the bathroom.
We children often had a red left knee in the winter. When we were occupying the bathroom for good reasons, the left knee was near the outlet for the hot air. The reason to stay there for longer than necessary was the pile of issues of the Reader’s Digest. I hope that I have not been influenced too much by the content, but I have to admit that some of the stories would stick for decades.
There was one section returning in every issue, called “The best advice of my life”. One advice later on often came to my mind, when biking through the rain or in similar situations. The story was about two men who planned to row up the Amazon in Brazil for more than thousand miles. They got an advice that really helped them to realize their dream. The advice was: Always try to reach the next bow of the river. Do not think too much about everything that may come afterwards.
Rain or no rain, it helped me, too, to cover larger distances, concentrating on reaching the next crossing, and the one afterwards, and so on.
Of course, we don’t want to lose sight of the final destination. But to get there, we have to concentrate on the next step.
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