#accomplishment — Public Fediverse posts

A quotation from Thomas Carlyle

The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish something: the strongest, by dispensing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything. The drop, by continually falling, bores its passage through the hardest rock; the hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar, and leaves no trace behind.

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and historian
The Life of Friedrich Schiller, Part 2 (1825)

More about this quote: wist.info/carlyle-thomas/84047…

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Reaching

When I write
I find myself reaching—

reaching
reaching
reaching
reaching

for something.

Satisfaction.
Accomplishment.
Arrival.

There is none now.

Only words.
More words.
Another page.

Perhaps
I still have far to climb.

Perhaps
I have mistaken a hill
for a mountain.

Perhaps
the pinnacle
was never there.

Perhaps there is no
there.

Only this:

the reaching,
the climbing,
the wanting
to arrive.

And still
nothing.

No summit.
No flag.
No voice saying—

enough.

Perhaps
I am not finished.

Perhaps
I never will be.

Or perhaps

this is only doubt and hope —

standing at the bottom
of something,

looking up.

(Journal entry April 8, 1986, age 19, expanded 40 years later)