Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska

Wanda's Diary Entries

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Three basic pieces of equipment are at the ready for snow removal at our landlady’s house in Warsaw: a broom, a plastic shovel, and a metal shovel. A wide sidewalk stretches 30 feet in front of our townhouse here in Bielany, and it’s our responsibility to keep it cleared for foot traffic and the occasional bicycle and sled. Henry and I have had ample opportunity to use all three during our snowy winter here. It’s been years for me, decades, in fact, since I’ve lived in snowy Northern American cities like Boston and New York City, so I’ve had to relearn the snow removal basics.

Like so many other household tasks, how you tackle these simple chores provides an excellent metaphor for your approach to life. If you start work as soon as the snow has fallen — and get the job done — you can easily complete the task with the broom. If you wait longer, and some people and animals have walked the sidewalk and compacted the snow, you may be able to get it all up — with a bit more exertion — with the plastic shovel. If, however, you really let it go for a day or more, and the crowds have tamped down the snow, and maybe a little of it has thawed and refrozen, you’re forced to work with the metal shovel. You must expend tremendous energy (not to mention generating loud noise) by breaking up the ice-crusted snow, then removing it. It may take you five to eight times as long to remove the snow and slush that could have easily been swept away hours earlier.

The same goes for life. If you act immediately once a task is laid before you, you can to handle it with the least difficulty and greatest chance for success.