“Yesterday is history. Tomorrow, a mystery… but Today is a gift. That’s why it’s called Present” Master Oogway (the Turtle in Kung Fu Panda)

In 2005 I started boring flutes on a lathe.  It was not going well at all.  I had some incredible curly koa and lost most of it while trying to bore the blanks. 

Around that time, a young Native guy asked me to teach him how to make a flute.  He had a vision for creating a flute with a totem that was also a prayer pipe bowl. 

He brought his medicine box with him to my shop.  When he opened it up, there was a jade turtle carving in the box. I said to him that I had been seeing Turtle everywhere. 

He told me that that summer, he had visited a reservation in North Dakota.  While there, he was driving too fast and the Elders pulled him aside and told him the story of the race between Turtle and Rabbit.  Turtle wins the race even though he was so much slower than Rabbit.  As soon as he told me this anecdote, I realized the mistake I was making trying to bore the flutes.  I was rushing the process. 

The elders gifted him the Turtle carving and that day he gifted it to me.  I placed it on a shelf, right above the lathe, to remind myself to go slow and smooth. 

Slow is smooth.  Smooth is fast.

I feel we focus too much on the destination sometimes and forget that life, and anything we do, is a lot more about the journey itself.  This is what the story of Turtle inspires in me and I hope it does to you as well.