If you’re driving down a main road in the Sacred Valley, the region in Cusco formed by the Urubamba river carved between the surrounding mountains, you will see snowcapped Andes triumphantly dancing along the horizon, steep hills and mountains holding you gently on either side, light sifting through their angles and casting patterns along the landscape. You will see flatlands where the local people prepare their harvested crops, or perhaps dehydrate potatoes in traditional chuño fashion. You will see neighborhood soccer fields, cemeteries, and statues in the towns that you pass through. Statues depicting the traditional fashion or, if you keep your eyes peeled, statues of a guinea pig– or “cuy”– a local delicacy. The expression on the cuy statue looks downright cheerful, despite its looming fate. You will see textiles dyed from native plants, and women leading alpacas down the road. You may see the names and symbols of politicians campaigning for an upcoming election– their names and symbols will be painted on the side of buildings or patterned into the side of a mountain. You will see dogs trotting alongside the road, getting their daily fix of adventure before they return home to their owners at the end of the day.
You will also see a series of what looks like unfinished buildings or homes during your entire drive. When you’re a traveler in a new land, you get to be struck with the curiosity of a child again, and notice every little detail in the fabric of this new environment. Every little thing that stands out, every little thing that makes your mind register “hmm, that’s different.” And if you give into this curiosity, if you embrace it, there is so much to learn.
These “unfinished” buildings each had their own little unique features — wall paintings, size, number of cement blocks — and varied in their level of seemingly “complete”– but most of them were missing a roof, a number of them had three sides to the structure rather than four, and many of them had sheets of tarping attached to their sides, metal poles protruding upwards from a few spots alongside the top surfaces of the walls. Their defining quality of “not yet done,” piqued some serious curiosity.
During our recent trip to Peru, I had a tourguide for two days in a row, and an amazing one at that. He was the MAN, I’m telling you. He had started out decades ago as a porter on the Inca Trail for a tour company, and over the years has built his expertise and experience and now runs his own growing company where he brings people to Machu Picchu, either by way of the Inca Trail, or through designing an itinerary where visitors take the train from Ollataytambo to Aguas Calientes and he meets you in Aguas Calientes the following morning to show you Machu Picchu and, in the process, teach you an abundance of captivating history.
During our car ride from Cusco city to Ollataytambo, my travel companion asked about the unfinished structures alongside the road– what they would be when they were finished, what the process was like, how long each building usually takes. Our tourguide explained that these were houses being built. Typically for structures like these, a family would first build a business on the bottom, then living quarters in the middle, where they would live and be able to tend to the business, then perhaps some apartments on the top, which the family could lease to others. The process of building takes some time– first you build the foundation, then you wait for the additional materials, then you build the walls, then you wait for the additional materials, then you add the roof. Seemed straightforward enough. But what struck me the most about this description was a phrase within his explanation: “Poco a poco. This is how you build a house. First the foundation, then the walls, then the roof. It takes time.” Poco a poco is Spanish for little by little. I can’t think of a more perfect phrase.
Anything that contributes to a happy livelihood takes time. I’ll say that again. Anything that contributes to a happy livelihood takes time. It takes planning. It takes materials. It takes design. And it takes patience with yourself.
We live in a world where you can quite literally Google “House in a Box,” and dozens of results come up. But our familiarity with–and affinity for–solutions-in-a-box, overnight shipping, Ikea-like-ease, “instant success,” and everything in between develops unrealistic expectations for ourselves and our endeavors. We expect our progress to be as fast as our WiFi connections, and there’s a real danger in that. Satisfaction of a job well done is all too often eclipsed by a burning, impatient desire for convenience and faster, sexier, flashier results.
The next morning, I visited Machu Picchu. There really are no words to describe the awe one feels when the sun is rising over a mountain on your one side, and hues of green and earth tantalize your pupil on the other side, as you behold the terraces and ancient temples and sacrificial sites and schoolhouse and living quarters of the nobility that had been bustling thousands of years prior, but not so thousands that it’s impossible to imagine. The feeling I had can best be described as if getting the happy goosebumps were transformed into an emotion.
After the circuit of Machu Picchu, we arrived at the entry point for Huayna Picchu, a mountain that, when you make it up to the top, has the most stunning view of Machu Picchu and a 360-degree-view of the surrounding land. Valleys, the river, lush mountainsides, trails, deep forests. Mother nature in ALL her glory.
A tightly controlled number of people are permitted to hike Huayna Picchu each day, and the overseeing entity allows designated waves to enter at specified times. We had planned to make the 10am climb, and climb we did.
Huayna Picchu is a 1,000 foot ascent along the side of a very beautiful and very rocky mountain, accented by deep moss and lush plants and, along some stretches, a peripheral rope to aid the hike. The steps are carved out of rock, and, well, vertical as vertical gets. They vary in depth from what a 5-foot-3 person (me) might gauge as doable, to what felt like my entire leg span. Many are extremely narrow, and I’m going to go ahead and say that none of them are even.
Climbing Huayna Picchu was the most physically demanding hike I have ever completed, and one of the most physically demanding activities I had ever engaged in. There was a part of me that was afraid I wouldn’t be able to do it. It was also my favorite part of the trip. There were points where I had to pull myself up the stairs on all fours. I most definitely felt backsweat dripping down my spandex the whole time. There was no shortage of choice words muttered underneath my breath. Fellow hikers would precariously make their way down the mountain, eyeing and calculating their next foot placement, while also emphatically beaming about how incredible the view was at the top, and how it was worth every ounce of the hurt, in various languages and accents. And they were right. It was worth every split second of unease, of sweat, of huffing and puffing and squeezing my thighs with my hands as if trying to inject more endurance into them.
During my climb, I was reminded of the phrase “poco a poco,” and that became my motto, my reminder that I would smile breathlessly through, my anchor when my travel buddy and our tourguide would turn around and I’d give them the “thumbs up.” Thumbs up, because your girl is putting her faith in poco a poco.
Poco a poco was the only way for me to reach the top of the mountain, and, in my opinion, it is the only way for me to continue navigating and working my way up the proverbial mountains of the future.
Poco a poco. Little by Little. How else does anything realistically get built?
In thinking about poco a poco, it struck me that our culture’s insistence to go from 0 to 60 and feel polished overnight is what leaves us with such a deeply rooted sense of dissatisfaction, anxiety, and a nagging fear that we are somehow “behind.” We picture where we want to be and then we get intensely nervous that we’re not there yet. What do I want to be? A GREAT elementary school teacher. A published author. A world traveler. Someone who helps others. Someone who empowers others. Someone who is known for her creative work and has an identifiable niche. What do I want to be? Someday, a homeowner, a mom, a wife, financially successful, an entrepreneur, a teacher, a lifelong educator. Someone who can juggle all those balls in a sustainable and scalable way. The truth? I haven’t figured out how to yet, nor do I feel remotely close.
There is great power in visualizing what you want, and deciding to go after it. The slippery slope appears when we get impatient and ask ourselves why we don’t already have it. When we compare ourselves to everyone else who seems to have it “figured out.” The fact of the matter is, no one has it truly “figured out.” We are all still building, still tinkering. Even Beyonce. I think. (Don’t quote me on that one though)
Just remember: The Incas didn’t build Machu Picchu in a day. Nor did the Romans with Rome. You wouldn’t run a marathon with zero training. Language acquisition doesn’t happen overnight. Children aren’t born knowing how to read. It took me four years to become an elementary school teacher once I realized I wanted to become one. I have more dormant/”abandoned” blogs and passion projects than you can imagine.
You build a house by building the foundation, then the walls, then the roof. You have to wait for materials in between. The more patient we are with ourselves and the process, the closer we get to actual results that reflect who we are and where we want to be. We are always growing, always reaching, always strengthening our foundation. That is why the process is so important. We can build a shiny house of cards and pray that a breeze won’t come along, or we can build something that takes longer but serves our needs through any kind of storm.
Poco a poco. Little by little. That’s all it takes.
With abundant respect for your process and a deepening patience in my own,
Hales