A friend tells me—admittedly without verification—that one of the military special operations forces—Navy SEALs, Rangers, Delta Force, for example—trains their soldiers by requiring them to run, then swim, then fight, then run again, then swim, sometimes all day and all night. As the soldiers approach utter fatigue before dawn, they hold up a light ahead of the squad and tell the men to run toward it. But as they get nearer, the light is moved farther away, and then from the land out onto the ocean. Again and again, the light is moved.
When the soldiers can bear no more, the light is moved to the land, where the men are allowed to gather around the light, collapse, and breathe. Then they are told that the lesson is that sometimes the job will never be done. Even more often, you can’t know when the job will be done until it’s completed.
We’re all walking, swimming, and sometimes struggling toward the light. Often it seems that it moves in the distance. But in the process of persevering we become stronger, the light becomes more visible, and sometimes we can just relax as we bathe in its warmth.
