No Larger than a Single Step

Do you ever get the feeling that you are quintuple-majoring in Life?

I may not be in school right now, but I am still a student. My schedule this semester includes (but is not limited to):

Expressing Gratitude beyond 'oh, thanks!' 
Putting Things Away In Their Place- with a focus on establishing a place for each item
Trusting in Hashem, who can run the world perfectly well without me as a backseat driver
Punctuality
Listening to Voicemail (often) and Calling People Back (promptly)- this is a tough one. maybe next semester we'll start on email...
Being a Rolemodel 
Smiling, especially at my husband, regardless


And I am starting to see that so many enormous achievements in life (health, happiness, financial stability, strong relationships, and successful Torah study, to name a few) are just a question of tiny, miniscule habits- the kind of tiny habits that you stick to day in and day out. 


It's like...plunking a penny into your New Kids on the Block Lunchbox (that you made into a bank by stabbing a hole in the top with half of a pair of scissors) day after day until you count up all those pennies and realize that you can buy the My Little Pony yourself. And even though the beginning was marked with the hopelessly hollow sound of the penny sailing through the empty lunchbox and landing in the very bottom, tempting you to quit and laugh at your foolish dreams, your penny-plunking has become so habitual by now that you don't even notice it anymore. And stopped listening to gauge how far the penny had to fall inside the lunchbox anymore. Until the day, today, that you tried to drop in your penny and it simply had nowhere to go- the box was filled. 


I know someone who walked from Maalot Dafna to Neve Yaakov on the holiday of Simchas Torah for the bris of his twin nephews (when, like on Shabbos, we are prohibited from driving). If you aren't familiar with Jerusalem, just know that NO ONE WALKS TO NEVE YAAKOV- it's really, really far. But one thing I realized is that even though he made it all the way from Maalot Dafna to Neve Yaakov and back, there were absolutely no increments of that walk that were larger than a single step.