Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by how far we have yet to go.
My aspirations, and the collective aspirations of our team, for the Discovery College are huge. We want to be delivering powerful transformative work with children and young people. We want to be demonstrating how effective and beneficial co-production and lived experience leaders can be. We want to be lobbying for better quality and more preventative support at a local and national level. We want to have a building that is bustling, vibrant, and loud and quiet in equal measure.
When I see pieces of this vision being enacted by other people and organisations I manage to be both inspired and envious! I look at the strides we've made forward to date and, whilst I can objectively see them as substantial and fast-paced progress, I also feel a little jolt of nerves that we're not moving quickly enough. That we still have so far yet to go.
But...
I'm currently reading a book. I'm an avid reader and munch my way through fiction and fantasy at an alarming rate. The protagonist in my current page turner is trying to do the impossible. He's trying to bond together a disparate, conflicting and tumultuous set of communities to overcome a powerful injustice. He's short on time and, due to a fairly shady past on his part, he's having to work hard to gain the trust of the people he's trying to persuade. The work is ambitious, hard, slower than he'd like, and highly personal to him. He spends chapters and chapters ruminating on what the most important step of a journey is. He concludes that the most important step is... the next one.
The point isn't how long it takes, it's not even the destination, it's that you keep going.
So on those days when I'm feeling overwhelmed, when everyone else seems to be reaching loftier heights than us, or I'm trying to wrap my head around how long-term this commitment needs to be, I focus in.
Just the next step...
And you know, I think the next steps are going to be exciting 😊
