The Farmer's Two Wells

Two neighboring farmers, both needing a reliable well for their fields, began digging around the same time. The first farmer, striking hard rock a few feet down, grew discouraged and abandoned that spot for a seemingly easier one nearby, only to hit a different obstacle there too — a stubborn root system this time — and moved on once more, certain each new spot would surely prove easier than the last.

The second farmer, striking the very same hard rock at a similar depth in his own single chosen spot, simply kept working through it, day after exhausting day, breaking through slowly with patient, unglamorous effort rather than abandoning the site for the promise of an easier one elsewhere.

After several months, the first farmer's field was scarred with half a dozen abandoned holes, each representing real effort spent and then walked away from, with no water to show for any of it. The second farmer, having finally broken through the rock layer in his single persistent spot, struck a strong, reliable aquifer that supplied his entire field reliably for the rest of his life. Neighbors who once mocked his stubbornness for continuing to dig through rock long after it seemed reasonable to try elsewhere came instead to ask how he'd found such reliable water, and he told them plainly: the depth of commitment to one spot mattered more than the breadth of restarting in many, since every abandoned hole meant starting the hardest part all over again from nothing.