Our road has been intermittently inaccessible for a few days. The sidewalk has been torn up in places as work is done. It’s been loud. Sometimes, there is machinery parked in front of our house. Once it was blocking our driveway.

If you asked me if I wanted any of this, I would say No. I would say it emphatically. I would say it with a great deal of certainty. I would think, That doesn’t sound the least bit fun or convenient. I’ll pass.

Here’s the thing, though: The lines that supply basic utilities to our neighborhood need to be replaced. Although it means a little bit of inconvenience and unpleasantness for a few days, the neighborhood where I live will be safer overall in the long term.

So, in the end, I’m not so bothered by the temporary need to wave down someone in an orange vest to move a big truck so I can leave the house. It’s a short-term cost for a long-term benefit.

Our brains don’t often like that trade. We prefer short-term benefits over short-term costs, and long-term anything might not even enter the equation. It takes a bit of mindfulness to step back and gain a little perspective.

It’s really great to live in the moment. There is a lot of wisdom to being fully present here and now. In many ways, living too much in the future or in the past can be unhealthy.

At the same time, so much of what we hope to create in the world requires long-term persistence, incremental change, shifting and growing little by little. Our mutual commitment to a global community with peace and liberty and justice for every person can’t even be calculated with short-term equations.

Really, living with integrity to any of our Unitarian Universalist principles or values is a long-term endeavor. It may require some inconvenience or discomfort in the short term. It might even be painful in some ways. Having a compelling vision for ourselves, for our community, and for the world is no small thing.

When I begin to feel annoyed or bothered by the temporary unpleasantness on the street where I live, I remember that the long-term well-being of my whole neighborhood is on the other side of that minor inconvenience. I can look across the street and laugh with my neighbor as we shrug and shake our heads.

And with that hope for what’s in store, I can go back to living in the moment, feeling grateful for the care of those workers in their orange vests, and musing at the flock of birds I might not have noticed if I didn’t have to stop at the end of my driveway and wait for a few extra moments while a piece of machinery was moved a few feet to let me pass. Maybe the short-term discomfort isn’t even that much of a sacrifice.