Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step. ~Lao Tzu

Prefer to listen? You can jump to the accompanying podcast episode, Episode 5: Journey vs Destination on the Unschooled Homebirth podcast wherever you get podcasts. 

This quote from Lao Tzu is best known for the line about the journey of a thousand miles beginning with one step, but it is the frequently overlooked lines leading up to it that are the true lesson, these are the explanation of how and when to take the first step: "Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small."

These 16 simple words describe how we should approach all great things in our life, including birth. The journey does begin with one step, but the timing of that step is what counts. Timing the step right is all about observing the rhythms of nature, the rhythms of yourself and how you intersect with those rhythms.

If you harmonize with the natural rhythms of nature, you will find those steps are taken with ease "do the difficult things while they are easy…" Lao Tzu knew that everything had a right time, there is a right time for picking a peach, there is a right time for sleep, a right time to plant a seed, a right time to catch a fish, and in the time Lao Tzu may have lived, it was crucial for life to harmonize with the right time.

If you pick the peach when it is ripe, it will easily break free from the tree, if you sleep with the stars, it is easier to quiet your mind and rest peacefully, if you plant the seed when the soil is fertile, it will nourish the seedlings and provide strong crops, if you catch the fish when the river is full, you won't have an empty line.

Harvesting fruit, growing crops, catching fish, even taking time to rest your body and mind can be difficult if you try to manipulate the timing, thus following the timing of nature makes difficult things easy.

Like everything else in life, birth has a time, labor has a rhythm, and if you understand your rhythms, and nature's rhythms, you can find harmony.

That brings us to "do the great things while they are small." The meaning is similar to "do the difficult things while they are easy", doing great things requires seeing the smaller pieces that come together to form the great thing. Building a sand castle begins with a small bucket of sand, and after multiple small buckets of sand, eventually you have a full castle. A later passerby will only see the great thing, not the small buckets of sand that were built up one-by-one, but they were the necessary small steps to create greatness.

Birth is one of the greatest things, giving life to another human being, to a child is one of the greatest achievements you can experience, but it only comes after so many small steps, 40 weeks, 280 days or 6,720 hours, each small hour brings you closer to meeting your baby. Then when labor arrives, each contraction, a relatively small contribution in the big picture of labor, builds up to the great event of the moment of birth. If birth happened all at once, instead of building up over time, if would be overwhelming, but nature gives us the gift of labor starting small and building into something great, of making a difficult thing have a way to be easy, if we take it one small step at a time, one contraction, one breath, once contraction, one breath.

This is all part of the journey to birth, the journey to something great.

Hear more about the journey to birth on the Journey to Birth podcast episode Journey vs Destination, release date Tuesday, February 18th, 2020.