We poured a lot of concrete at my house this past week and I am fascinated with cement. Is that weird? I have used concrete as illustrations many times in my speaking and I am inclined to do it again today.
We had a couple of experts at laying concrete in our back yard. These guys took wheelbarrows full of wet, clumpy, gray stuff and turned it into a beautifully finished, smooth, refined surface around my house. These experts knew when to work it and when to let it lie. These experts knew when they needed more or when they needed less to fill the forms they had in place. They knew what they were doing.
Now there are a lot of illustrations in this activity. The first one that comes to mind is raising kids. When you raise kids you want them to be "formed" in a particular way. You don't want them to be selfish so you set up a form on that side. You don't want them to be angry and violent so you set up a form on that side. You want them to have love and care so you form them in that way. As the child grows the forms are filled and before the personality of that child is "set" you work the cement of their lives while you still can. Over the years that cement will harden and become increasingly hard to manipulate and form. So you make sure you keep the forms in place, you add and subtract and trim where you need to, and you smooth out the rough edges. There is a proverb that goes like this: "Train up a child in the way they should go and when they are old they will not depart from it." In other words: "Work the cement before it sets up!"
But what impressed me the most this week were the experts. These guys knew how to work cement! In the Japanese traditional culture it is the grandparents who raised the kids while the parents work. When the parents become grandparents it is then their job to raise their grandkids. Maybe they were on to something there .... Who are the experts you can go to? Who are the people in your life that have "been there and done that?" Use the resources you can, use the experts because you will be surprised at how fast that cement hardens.