Nietzsche isn't simply telling us that mastery requires patience—he's insisting that the *intermediate steps* aren't mere scaffolding to discard once we've reached our goal, but rather the very substance that makes flight possible. Notice how he moves through increasingly ambitious physical acts: the progression builds not just skill but *confidence*, and that confidence becomes inseparable from the ability itself. When someone learns to write, for instance, the years spent writing poorly, getting rejected, revising endlessly aren't delays before "real writing" begins—they're where the real writing lives, and the published success merely announces what's already been earned through that grinding practice. The quiet wisdom here is that we tend to skip steps we think are beneath our ambitions, then wonder why our grand visions feel hollow.