When my younger brother and I were kids, our father would often enlist us in his work crew of one. We cleared brush in the woods around the house, raked leaves, mucked out stables in the barn, and helped him build decorative rock walls, which he constructed on every property he ever owned.
Frequently, Dad would pause in these chores, look at us, and comment: “Pace yourself, boys. You’re going to wear out.”
This same counsel is embedded in the adage “Life’s a marathon, not a sprint.” As the narrator of Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” tells us, we have miles to go before we sleep….