Small and Great

Small is Beautiful: One of the most important insights any of us can have is that it's possible to live a truly heroic life on a small scale utterly outside the glaring, blaring global media complex, and to do lasting good for many of our fellow human beings, not in massive numbers and all at once, but over time, one by one.

There can be a special purity, a nobility, a distinct glory in the life of the small fish in the small pond who brightens up the prospects of each day and shows those in his or her proximity the wonder of greatness that can be and can thrive amid the ordinary run of things. This is where the real magic is.

One of my favorite characters in George Eliot’s deep and engaging novel Middlemarch begins the story full of promise, lives through various disappointments to her dreams, rises above the slings and arrows of her changing fortune, and finally, in the end, living in outwardly diminished circumstances, does her own form of wonderful good for her fellows in small and constant ways and clearly becomes the ultimate hero of the story. Eliot writes:

<<Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.>>

For Eliot’s magnificent novel, click HERE. Then, go do your own good in small and lasting ways on this precious day we’ve all been given.

The Size of Your Life

I live in many ways a small, snug life. And I'm happy in it. But one of the hardest things in the modern world is to be content with the size of your life.

People contact me all the time to tell me about their grand plans, their world-historical ambitions and dreams that will likely play out on a stage so big that the earth itself will seem too small to support it all. And even our own galaxy, in contrast, may appear to be a bit modest and out of the way for the immense grandeur that is to transpire, if their goals are realized. 

This has been going on for decades. Really. My wife says I'm some sort of a magnet for grandiose dreamers. I don't know why. I do enjoy hearing of their ambitions. I deeply appreciate unfettered enthusiasm. I love thinking big. But as I listen to the various magnificent plans, I always wonder: "How?" And sometimes: "Why?"

Most days, I work at home. And most of my day involves working on very little things. I realized long ago that if I was going to personally change the world for the better, it would have to be very slowly. And so now, on the brink of my 63rd birthday, you've got to give me credit for sticking to my own plan and sense of timing. I've been slow, indeed. The world is not yet, it seems, quite changed in the way I've intended. Maybe I've planted a few seeds over the years that will germinate. And it could be that the results of those seeds will go far beyond anything I can currently imagine. But then again, if not, that's fine, too.

I've come to suspect that there is a way in which the smallest lives can be among the biggest, and what play out as the biggest may often be missing out on the real adventure. You see, surface appearances don't tend to be reliable guides to deeper realities. There may be a spiritual transvaluation of values that's always going on. Focus on the right things, and your life, however humble it seems, is in reality infinitely expansive. Chase the wrong things, however grand, and you've shrunk it down to a pinpoint of value. And then, in the realm of the right things, any little action can have ripples that don't stop. My hyperbolic dreamers, by contrast, often aspire to the role of demi-gods, and want to make huge waves that could end up with the effect of a tsunami.

So, my thought for the day, if I actually have one here, is to enjoy, relish, and value the small things in your life. Maybe you are changing the world, whether you're advertising it in huge letters of skywriting for us all to read or not. Maybe your small is really big.

Small is good.

A Little Bit of Paradox

Each of us is ordinary. Each nonetheless is more. Each of us has limits. Each is infinite, as well. Each of us is flesh. Yet each of us is spirit. Each is of the earth. Each is of the stars. Each started small. Each can be great. Each has a real past. Each is mostly future.

We all live now. We all can grow. Almost anything can kill us. Almost nothing can stop us. Others can build us up. Others can bring us down. Belief can drain us. Belief can fulfill us. Good action is for others. Good action is for us. 

Wisdom is hard. It's also quite easy. Action is the means. It is also the end.