My grandfather was a man who could spend an entire afternoon in the bush without getting bored. He noticed things I would normally walk past without a second glance. A broken branch, the movement of insects, the way birds disappeared into trees and returned a few moments later. He seemed to find something worth watching in almost everything.
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I remember one afternoon when he drew my attention to a bird's nest resting between the branches of an acacia tree. It looked rough from where we stood. Dry grass hung from its edges, with little sticks crossing one another in no particular order. Yet it remained firmly attached to the branch.
He watched it for a moment before pointing out how much work had gone into making it. The bird had collected one small piece after another, carrying each with its beak and fitting it into the growing structure. Nothing had been handed to it. It had simply used what it could find.
I was more interested in the bird than the nest that afternoon, so I didn't ask many questions. I had no idea that such a small observation would return to me years later.
I remembered it when I was nineteen, sitting in my room with a laptop in front of me, trying to make sense of what I wanted from life. I had ideas, ambitions and plenty of things I wanted to try, but very little seemed to be falling into place. Some days I would work for hours and still feel as though I hadn't moved an inch.
It was frustrating. I wanted results, preferably quickly. I wanted to see something growing from all the effort I was putting in. And whenever things moved slowly, I began questioning myself. Was I wasting my time? Was everyone else figuring life out while I was still trying to find my way?
The pressure to keep doing something made it even worse. There is always something telling us that we should be working harder, moving faster or doing more. Before long, even resting starts to feel like a mistake.
But I began noticing that being busy and making progress are not always the same thing.
Sometimes, we spend so much energy trying to keep up with everything that we forget what we were trying to build in the first place. We jump between ideas, rush decisions and take on more than we can manage. At the end of it all, we are tired, but the important things remain unfinished.
That afternoon with my grandfather began to make more sense.
The bird had not built its nest by collecting everything it saw. It gathered what it needed and put it to use. A single piece of grass could not make a home, and neither could a small twig. But together, over time, they became something useful.
I find that thought strangely comforting.
I don't have everything figured out. There are things I want to achieve that are still far beyond my reach. Sometimes I write and wonder who will ever read what I've written. Sometimes I try learning something new and get stuck on a problem that seems simple to everyone else. There are also days when I have to put my plans aside because life has other demands.
Still, I am learning not to dismiss small beginnings just because they don't look impressive.
When I write an article, I have only a few paragraphs to work with. When I learn to code, I start with problems I don't always understand. When I think about the future, I cannot see the whole picture. All I can really do is work with what is in front of me.
I sometimes wish I could go back to that afternoon and ask my grandfather what else he had noticed about the bird. Perhaps he would have had another observation, or perhaps he would simply have pointed at the nest again.
Either way, I think I understand why he wanted me to look at it.
Not everything worth building needs to happen quickly. And not every effort needs to be seen by someone else to matter.
That little nest was not impressive because of how it looked. It mattered because it served a purpose. It gave the bird somewhere to return to, somewhere to raise its young, and somewhere to find shelter when the weather turned.
I still have a long way to go with the things I want to build. But I no longer want to spend all my energy worrying about how quickly I am getting there.
For now, I'll keep gathering my little pieces.