I was running this morning when I passed an old man shuffling along at a slow but steady pace. As I walked by him, I said, “Good morning.” He did not reply. He just looked in my direction and gave a nod. His eyes said it all. Keep running, my friend. I will be here tomorrow and again the next day. When you are too busy to run, I will be here. When you are traveling to your fancy business meeting, I will still be here. When you stop because you fall out of practice, I will still be here. I will just keep running. I will keep plodding on.
After passing him, value builds slowly but only after steady and consistent progress. No matter what great idea you can come up with, you cannot instantly build that idea into value in one day, one week, or one sprint cycle. Value does not materialize in a moment of inspiration, but rather slowly, one brick at a time, until the structure takes shape and becomes undeniable.
The old man was not trying to impress anyone. He was not chasing a personal record. He was not posting his route on social media or tracking his splits with the latest technology. He was simply there, moving forward at a pace that looked almost comically slow compared to the urgency of the world around him. Yet there was something in his presence that felt more solid than anything I had accomplished that morning. He had shown up. He would show up tomorrow. He would show up the day after that.
I thought about the garden I pass on my route, the one with the tomato vines that refuse to hurry. They do not care about my pitch deck. They do not care about deadlines. They grow by a rule older than my ambition. They accept light, draw from the soil, and expand along their own timetable. The old man was like those vines. He was not bargaining with time. He was not trying to force a harvest before the season was ready. He was planting, tending, and letting the days do their part.
There is a part of me that still loves the adrenaline of the rush. I can make dashboards pulse and meetings hum, and sometimes that is the right medicine. But if the dashboard becomes my calendar and the hum becomes the story, I have forgotten why I started at all. We began because we believed something true about a problem, and we trusted that a careful solution, offered with courage, would find its people. That belief deserves the dignity of time.
The old man was not waiting for inspiration. He was not searching for the silver bullet that would make the work easier or the progress faster. He had learned what most of us resist: the only path is through. Not around. Not over. Not with a clever hack that makes the obstacle disappear. Through. One step at a time.
When I returned home, I thought about the small promises I keep to myself. The ones that look almost silly to others. You place your shoes by the door the night before. You fill a glass with water and drink it when you wake. You write one honest sentence in a notebook. These are not impressive to others, which is part of why they work. There is no audience to perform for, only a conscience to train.
The distance between the person you are and the person you want to be is crossed in steps that look almost silly. You do not need a grand plan. You do not need a perfect system. You need the willingness to show up when the work is hard, when the progress is invisible, when the only reward is the quiet satisfaction of keeping your word. Momentum does not appear when we wait to feel inspired. Momentum occurs when we act before the feeling arrives. The feeling follows, not the other way around.
There is a subtle dignity that grows from this practice. You stop arguing with yourself. You stop bargaining with your intention. You feel an inner nod when you say you will do something. That nod is recognition. It is the soul saying yes, this person keeps promises. The old man had that dignity. You could see it in the way he moved. He was not performing. He was not proving anything. He was simply being who he had decided to be.
When I think about the people I admire, they are not the ones who moved quickly. They are the ones who moved faithfully. They planted, tended, pruned, and let the seasons do their part. When momentum finally came, it looked like an overnight success from the outside. From the inside, it was the gentle accumulation of days.
The old man knows this. And now, so do I.
