Repetition is not only the basis for remembering things but also for persevering toward a goal. A dimple is not formed by the force of falling water but rather by the continuous impact of many drops. A person is also a victim of such a trace. We often notice wrinkles on our forehead or around our eyes. They did not just appear by themselves. Experts have found that a wrinkle is formed only after approximately 200 thousand times of repeated contraction of our forehead or some muscle controlling our face or part of the body. In this case, repetition ceases to be the mother of wisdom; it becomes a sign of repetition. That is also what life is about. Let us protect God’s life in our souls with vigilance and readiness.
Consider. If the housekeeper knew at what hour the thief would come, he would not allow him to enter his house.
In a Slovak lending institution, a young client was recently lent money, which he was supposed to repay gradually under agreed conditions. At first, everything worked according to the rules. Then, one day, the client stopped repaying. What happened? After a long search, the representatives of the institution discovered that their client—a man—had undergone a female genital mutilation operation and that she had gone to Ukraine, where she entered a monastery. When the harassed representatives of the institution asked her personally, after a long search, when she would repay her debt, she kindly replied, “You have to ask the person who concluded the contract with you. But it wasn’t me. And after all, as a nun, I don’t have any property!” We don’t even know how the loan repayment turned out, how long it took to prove it, or how the young man or woman got out of this unusual, complicated problem.
This case shows that life can be more complicated than it seems. Columbus left us his legacy not only in the form of discovered territories and new crops. We are also the heirs of a linguistic error. When he sailed to present-day Cuba on his three ships, he mistakenly called the natives Indians, not Indians. They exhaled mysterious smoke from their mouths, and the sailor, pointing to a pipe, asked what it was. The answer was “tobago,” meaning tobacco. However, “Tobago” means “pipe” in the local Indians’ language. They call tobacco cohiba. Cohiba is still the highest-quality cigar brand in the world today. The name “tobacco” has spread since Columbus. We accepted the error, and to this day we still call Cohiba a pipe, meaning tobacco. Mistakes have happened in many similar situations, but let’s not allow various refined offers to steal God’s life.
