Progress is measured backwards

Progress is a funny thing. All of us want to make it and yet few of us can tell it’s being made. The reason for that is as frustrating as it is simple: the people making the progress aren’t usually the ones who can measure it.

Progress is measured by people who live after us and look back on the things we may or may not have done. This is the reason that the many dead people become smarter the longer they’re dead. What they did while they were alive was invisible progress, and it often took years — even decades — before the rest of the world caught on to the progress that they had made.

Gregor Mendel comes to mind. Today he is known as the father of modern genetics, but when he was alive in the 1800s he was just known as a monk who liked to play in his garden with pea plants. It wasn’t until decades after his death that the words he had journaled as he studied the effects of crossbreeding his pea plants — “recessive” and “dominant” — became known as what we now call modern genetics.

You probably aren’t dabbling in pea plants, but who knows how the very mundane things you’re faithful in today will affect the many generations still to come?

So don’t stop. You may not feel like you’re making a ton of progress, but you aren’t the best judge of your progress. The ones who are probably haven’t even been born yet.

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