Caesar’s Calendar

Every August my whole family goes on a vacation to this beautiful little island just off the coast of South Carolina. My parents, my sister and her husband, my crew of me, my wife and my three children along with a family I’ve grown up with. It’s my favorite time of the year and easily my favorite place on the planet. I proposed to my wife on the beach of that tiny Island. It holds a special place in my heart for that, and many other countless reasons. We have many traditions on this week. My middle child loves to go shelling with my wife, my kids go crabbing on the dock with my sister, and on the first day every year we do some shopping at some shops just North. This year my son picked out something called “Caesar’s Calendar.” If you haven’t heard of it you see what it is here. But it’s a simple puzzle where you have to place different shaped blocks in a specific patter each day to reveal the month, date, and day of the week. My son quickly got it on the first day. I cheated and looked up the patter on the second day, each day after I worked and was able to find the pattern but it took some time.

Read that again. It took some time. Never once did I get it the first time I laid the blocks down. Every time I had to rearrange them into a new pattern and then again, and again, and yet again. The quickest I was able to get it was somewhere around 20 - 30 minutes. Honestly, it felt like a lot longer. It was only after I looked at my watch was I surprised to see if “only” took me 20 - 30 minutes. My son tends to get frustrated if he doesn’t get something correct the first time. He is a smart kid and doesn’t like the feeling that he can’t get something nailed down quickly. I understand that feeling. He probably gets that particular character quality from me. I’m not sure if I was as smart as he is when I was his age, but I like to think of myself as smart nonetheless. So when something doesn’t click quickly for me I can get frustrated. Another factor is that I like to get things done quickly. I don’t like the marathon pace, I’d rather sprint. But oftentimes the race is too long to sprint the whole time. So I’m left with one of three choices.

(1) Sprint until I can’t anymore and burn myself out completely.
(2) Abandon the race completely because there’s no way to sprint the whole time.
(3) Slow down and run the race at a pace that is sustainable.

That’s it, those are the options. You can take a break and catch your breath. There’s not law against that. But you still have to make one of those three choices; burnout, quit, or slow down. So often we neglect what the process can give us because we are so eager to get to the finish line. When in reality, it’s the process that provides the best stuff. For Caesar’s Calendar, the process stretches our brains, challenges or cognitive process, gives us stimuli that scrolling our phones can’t give. The completion of the process feels great. The sense of accomplishment is a nice dose of excitement. But it’s in the process that the real benefit resides. Could that be true of other things as well?

I read something recently that working out, even without showing much weight loss, is still healthier than not working out at all. When I type that and read it back it makes sense, of course moving our bodies is good for our internal organs and immune system, even our mental health. However, I can’t be the only one who looks at the scale after a month of working. not seeing a significant change and thinks, “What’s the point!?” When we get too focused on the end result we miss the point. The point isn’t ONLY to solve the puzzle. The point isn’t ONLY to lose pounds. There’s more to it, the process is where the magic happens. We learn more about ourselves through the process than we do the completion of the process.

Does that make sense?

I don’t know what process you’re in the middle of right now. Or maybe you’re just starting one. Or looking motivation to start one. Maybe you’re at the end of one process and getting ready to start the next one. Either way, I hope you can be encouraged that the process is where the magic happens. The process is where the most lessons are learned.

Not every process is enjoyable. But every process carries a lesson. Every process offers perspective. We just have to choose to see it. Which is what we all really want after all, isn’t it? To have a sense of control. We can’t always choose or control what happens to us, but we can choose and control what we do about it. How we respond to what happens to us, that is something we can control.

May you find the point in the process. May you find purpose in the process. May you find the strength and courage to choose how you respond, even when you can’t always choose the process.