Looking at the sea

In autumn the rivers flooded and poured into the Yellow River. The water spread so wide you couldn't tell a cow from a horse on the far bank. The Lord of the River was delighted. He thought all the beauty in the world was in his hands.

Then he flowed east, reached the sea, and looked north. There was no far shore. No end in either direction.

He turned to the ocean and said, before this I would have kept on being puffed up. Now I see my own smallness, and I'd have been a laughingstock among the wise.

The sea answered him with something gentler. You can't talk to a well frog about the sea. But now that you've come out of your river and seen the ocean, you know your own limits, and we can talk.

That's the part people miss. Seeing the size of things isn't humiliation, it's admission to a better conversation.

The discouragement you feel after meeting someone genuinely excellent is honest. The question is what you do in the next hour. Compare and quit, or compare and get specific about the next small step.

MOJOWAY does the second one. Ten minutes of real conversation, three things worth working on, two ways in. Smallness, faced properly, is just a starting position.