At one point during Stonewall Jackson’s Valley Campaign in the spring of 1862, he wound up in a position where his force was on one side of a river while it needed to be on the other side. Jackson first approached his engineers and asked them to plan and build a bridge to safely get the army to the other side. They immediately set to the task they’d been assigned. He then spoke with his wagon master, telling him that it was urgent that the wagon train get to the other side. The Wagon master immediately began gathering logs, stones, and fence rails to build the bridge itself. That night the wagon master came back to General Jackson to inform him that the supply wagons and artillery had successfully crossed the river. Surprised, the general asked where his engineers were. The answer: still meeting and planning the building of the bridge. The moral of the story is one of my favorite maxims: An ounce of work is worth a pound of meetings. This isn’t to say that meetings and planning aren’t important for success. They are. In fact, planning and preparation are often vital to success. However, there is a difference between planning to accomplish a goal and daydreaming or planning for the sake of planning. It is easy to carefully consider every aspect of a situation or challenge to the point that nothing ever actually gets started. This is one of my worst habits. I talked for years about going to seminary, considering the “where” and “hows” of the matter. Oddly enough, when I finally went, it took less time to finish than I actually spent talking and dreaming of doing it. The thing about dreaming/planning is that it is easy and it feels good. You get to enjoy all of the wonderful feelings of imagining a hard task completed without the hard work of doing it. I think this happens with diet and exercise more often than anything else. We think and dream of what the results will be in terms of being healthier or more attractive. It feels good to think about it. However, skipping dessert and exercising are hard and less pleasant. Consequently we dream and quickly quit. Dreaming and planning can be useful. They can help inspire us to action and can push us through more difficult times. However, they can also become a refuge from reality. A few years ago my brother got me interested in a short story by James Thurber, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, which I had read in school, though I had missed the point. Walter Mitty is a mediocre man who escapes his reality by daydreaming. I had thought it was interesting because the daydreams made the story kind of exciting. My younger brother pointed out that the reason the guy’s life was dull is because all he ever did was dream. He didn’t set goals or work to improve or take risks, he just dreamed. The explanation prompted me to set goals for things I tend to dream about, like being well read, fit, writing more, etc. I’ve discovered that simply acting, even in small pieces, does a great deal to make daydreams into realities. It’s a harder way to live, but is worth the effort.
