The Herculean Task

“Which of these movies is of the shortest duration?” I asked as we browsed through the 500GB Hard Disk which contained the best movies of all times.

“Why do you ask?” My friend exclaimed in a partly bewildered and partly offended tone, maybe because I unknowingly disparaged the effort he had put in by sorting the movies by their themes into different folders. This way of zeroing in on a movie seemed absurd to him.

“ ’cause I just can’t sit at one place for more than an hour and a half. So, the shorter the movie, the higher the probability that I’ll complete watching it in one sitting! ”

“But, you do sit for hours together when you read books, don’t you! Then why can’t you sit still and watch a movie?” He asked as innocently as a seven year old would ask – “Why didn’t evaporation from the bucket of water I had kept outside lead to respite from the scorching heat?” Just like a primary school teacher, I didn’t have a convincing explanation to the question. “I don’t know” I accepted meekly, as silly explanations wouldn’t have worked here.

I pondered over the question till much after the discussion was over. With my snail paced reading speed, I actually spend at least a quarter of a day to finish reading a hundred pages. And, if I’m reading non-fiction which might not be as captivating, it might take twice the time to go through the content of half the size of the fictitious counterpart. The same time could be invested in at least thrice the number of movies that would produce better results in terms of the numbers.

The next time I picked up a book, I realised that the task of reading the entire book had always seemed gargantuan. The 228 paged book that I held in my hands looked intimidating. I did what I had been doing ever since I started reading books. I counted the number of pages taking into account that the page numbers started with 5, counted the number of sections and the count of the chapters. With every chapter that I finished reading, I had a silent moment of celebration and with each section that I covered my satisfaction level grew two fold. It was after the accomplishment of the task when I found the answer to the enigma. I realised that a gigantic task when broken down into small achievable milestones makes it much easier to accomplish. And it’s equally important to appreciate ourselves for the small successes that come our way, for they form the foundation for the bigger landmark.