Photo “Huge Hole revisit” courtesy of Sam on Flickr.

Down the street, there is an enormous hole. It was a hole one month ago, and it is a hole today. The day is coming when the hole will be a building in which thousands of people are living.

Somewhere there is a drawing of the building. The hole is part of that plan. When the workers look at the hole, they see a foundation.

Everything in life starts as a hole.

I was traveling to a job for a new client. I had $75 in my business account, and nothing in my personal account. I had debts. I wasn’t sure if there was even enough room left on my credit card to pay for my expenses. It was one of the happiest days of my life, because I was building a business of my own. Yes I was in a hole, but I had a plan. The hole was my foundation.

You don’t ever see a building being made. You see workers standing around, smoking. You see men carrying things. You see materials being piled up. You see a lot of apparently random activity. A sky-scraper is made in slow motion. It’s a long-run proposition. It only happens because there’s a plan, and they stick with it.

In the long-run, we’re all dead. In the long-run you find out what you’re really made of. In the long-run, all the facts see the light of day. So whatever you’re doing, get in it for the long-run.

In the day-to-day we have a lot of surprises, failures, tough lessons, and set-backs. Some days are smoking men. Some days feel like nothing but the seemingly pointless activity of a shirking work-crew. You can do anything, but right now the bank account is empty and more bills are on the way.

A hole is just a hole if you don’t have a long-term plan.