Soulful Sundays: Plateau

"If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them."

-Bruce Lee

There is an old tale from the days of the western frontier. A man bought a mining claim with the promise of fortune glimmering just beneath the earth. At first, his work was blessed with abundance. The pick struck true, and a golden vein revealed itself near the surface. Every swing of the hammer seemed to bring reward, and every cart of ore was heavy with promise.

But soon, the vein ran dry. He dug deeper, hauled more rock, and pushed himself harder, certain that treasure still lay beneath his feet. Days stretched into years. His fortune dwindled, his faith eroded, and every load of stone seemed heavier than the last. At last, worn down and defeated, he sold the claim and walked away.

The man who bought that very land dug a mere three feet further and struck the vein again. All that the first miner had sought was there waiting for him, hidden just beyond the wall of his exhaustion.

This story is a reminder of how deceptive our plateaus can be. We imagine we have reached the end, when in truth we may be closer to breakthrough than ever before. The law of diminishing returns tells us that the same effort applied in the same way yields less over time, yet this does not mean the work is without meaning. Sometimes what is required is not more force but a different vision.

Plateaus invite us to see with new eyes. They teach us patience and humility. They ask us to risk new mistakes, to experiment in directions that feel counterintuitive. How can we make more by spending more? How can we overcome an enemy by being kind to them? How can we be more productive by resting more? How can we yield and still overcome? These reversals dislodge us from stale habits and open the possibility of fresh discovery.

Perhaps what we see as a plateau is not a dead end at all. Perhaps it is the cliff’s edge — the place where the old vein runs out, where the ground seems to fall away beneath our feet. To stop there is to retreat. To step forward is to leap. And in that leap, what once looked like the end may reveal itself as the place where we finally learn to fly.