“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. ”
(Robert Louis Stevenson)

There is a time to reap rewards. These come in the form of business accomplishments, athletic victories and academic victories, and even those magical relationship successes like hearing someone say, “I love you.”

But those rewards are rare, and they only come after we’ve put in the much less glamorous, and oftentimes much less pleasant, work of planting seeds. Seeds like…preparation. Seeds like…practice. Seeds like…serving and apologizing and refusing to freak out no matter what.

Planting always comes first, and never gets the glory. But that’s the only way to make the harvest possible.

Peace begins with pause,