The power of patience brought to bear on a problem should not be underappreciated, a taste which decidedly improves after experience exercising it. Patience provides time for any relevant issues to integrate answers tentative by themselves into a confident coherent whole. A disturbing resemblance to its less worthy cousin procrastination reminds us that hesitating inaction is sometimes better rather than do something wrong and enlarge the problem. Squeezing the tube is not the correct response to losing the cap.

Sometimes it's easy for the apparent (although unreal) complexity of a problem to stymie the gusto to solve it, whereas the actual (real) complexity doesn't merit the worry. Our pattern matching minds can leap in confusion to the conclusion that a task is beyond our abilities to perform. For example, the world today seems spinning out of control, measured by an inability of our leaders to deliver to expectations. The urge of empire to rush to action has scratched the poison rash of intolerance and inflamed reaction far beyond the humane desire of all save the most malfunctioning minds. What can be done?

Forty years ago, under a hanging sword of nuclear holocaust, a remarkable group of people worked hard to make a television show. They weren't overly concerned with charting an enlightened path for mankind yet, with the help of a solid base of believers, somehow ended up with that. Their inspiration plus our perspiration transported the story beyond itself, bringing about a bottom-up change spun by many disparate elements working in similar spirit but dissimilar ways- an "emergent effect" as it were.

I read something interesting that to this day captivates my imagination. Out of McCoy's "mathematical probability" of some millions of millions of stars (Earth-type planets, whatever), out of all of that- and perhaps more- only a tiny fraction are visible to us down here. (All those stars are in our galaxy too, making the fraction even lower.) Our limitations as individual human flesh gobbets (read: retinal photon sensitivity) confine even the sharpest eyes among us to some eight thousand points of light out of the multitude. That's one per night for little over twenty years. Plenty of time.

Next time a problem seems to overwhelm your powers of coping, encourage yourself with a brief simple exercise ... like counting the stars! (Just a few - no need to get it all done tonight!) Seemingly impossible obstacles can be intimidating but that doesn't mean they're insurmountable. Do what you do patiently and with perseverance, and do it well.