Seek and ye shall find, by david jarvis 2022.

when i was a pre-service teacher i was given the task of organising an archery sequence.

Ultimately we did several lessons upon archery, but of several things that stands out in my recollection is of the ending of one lesson.

In that lesson we had counted the total amount of arrows we gave out to be used by the students. I don’t recall the number, but during pack up we discovered the arrow count was short.

The entire class became involved in looking for the last arrows, and minutes went by as we searched the oval for the missing arrows. We found several arrows but one remained lost, and in a short time many students eventually gave up on the task and became distracted.

One student took to arguing that we should all just give up, finish the lesson and just move onwards. The in service teacher argued with that student back and forth, student presenting argument to teacher and vice versa. Meanwhile all the other students stood around and watched those two have their discussion. None kept looking that I noticed, for I continued to look and thus had my eyes mainly downward looking at the ovals grass.

I continued in my search pattern of the oval and listened to the back and forth verbalisations. Several minutes passed by and I discovered the lost arrow, it was horizontally threaded through and underneath the lawns runs of grass. I picked up the metal arrow and indicated to the class we could now all move to the next session of the day.

I noted the silence of the class as we carried the archery gear back to the shed and was quietly satisfied with myself for just keeping at the task of actually looking for the arrow.

Do you find yourself in a discussion about something – and then later discover someone else has just quietly got on with the task and after the arguments’ words have vanished into the void, the task was completed by someone else?

There is a time for talk and argument, and a time for direct persistent action. This story reveals that they can indeed happen all at the same time when enough people are involved!

Keep searching for your arrows, let neither argument nor distraction cease your questing, you will find what you seek. Keep going, onwards and upwards, eyes down looking… bingo!