The bread guy
SPOILER: this story will have a moral.
Once upon a time there was a tall, skinny and blond guy. One afternoon he nicely displayed salt, “Manitoba” flour, water, dried brewer’s yeast, “00” flour and sugar on a table, took a picture of them and embedded it at the beginning of his new Medium article, writing in the caption below it:
Upon being notified about it, all the people who until that moment had so passionately followed him, went right away to check out what he had come up with this time. Before such image, though, many of them wondered whether he was joking or being serious.
Undaunted, he took a bowl, combined the two flours in it, added one teaspoon of yeast and one of sugar, stirred everything together, took a bigger picture than the previous one, uploaded it and wrote again underneath it:
A pile of ivory-coloured powder, that’s what the majority was staring at; hence, many started worrying whether he had gone mad.
Calm and determined to prove them wrong, the young guy slowly poured the water, threw in a pinch of salt, mixed and exhibited the wet-and-ugly-looking concotion in the biggest of the Medium’s available formats, reiterating:
Considering that that mixture looked everything, but something edible, very few seemed to still be willing to listen to and support him.
Nevertheless, he did not give up: he knew he wasn’t mistaking one thing for another, he felt it. It’s just a matter of time, he continued to repeat to himself, it’s just a matter of time. Thus, he covered the receptacle with a dump cloth and put it into the oven at 28 degrees Celsius for three hours. When he took it out and unveiled it, he straightaway fathomed that that was the turning point. For this reason, instead of a photograph, this time he recorded a video. He uploaded it and confidently wrote in the caption:
Little by little, many of the people who had temporarily doubted his mental health, began to slowly do an about face. It wasn’t bread, that’s for sure, but it was undeniable that the substance had radically transformed: it had grown, it showed more connections, it kind of made more sense now to call it “bread”.
Observing how the gazes of those surrounding him had changed, the young fellow put even more stamina in what he was doing: he grabbed the mass and split it into three egual parts, which he then shaped and placed in the oven for an additional hour, not before having taken and posted a quick shot, along with the usual comment:
Sixty minutes later, witnessing what those initial ingredients had become thanks solely to the perseverance of that day-dreamer guy, the sceptics could be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Aware that the realization of his vision was just one step away, the guy turned the oven on and as soon as it reached the highest temperature, he placed the baking tray inside it. Not too long afterwards, the crowd that by then he had managed to captivate, received two last images. The message accompaning them, left them speechless:
Only then did the community realize that that skinny, tall and blond guy hadn’t readied the bread for himself: since the very beginning he had been working on something to share with them and he had tirelessly kept going despite all their disbelief.
THE MORAL
If you’ve got a clear vision of what your future can be and deep inside you know that achieving it would mean fulfillment to you, then you’ve got to work towards it in every single second of the present and you DONT’ HAVE TO STOP — ever !— even if no one around you seems to see what you see, even if the closest friend start doubting you. If you’re sure of what you see go and get it. Full stop!
That’s exactly what I’m doing with my book, my project, my dream. And that’s also the reason why, as of Wednesday, I’ll be talking about it in a podcast I have decided to title Future/Presente. For the time being you can read about it here, but within 48 hours you’ll find it on Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast… in a nutshell: it’ll literally come out of your ears.
