Work.
Since April I've been commuting to the East Coast, the only contract job I could find in the little corner of the SAP consulting field I've carved out for myself. Airports, rental cars, hotel rooms, take out sushi week after week -- wash, repeat. Back home on Thursday night (if my flight isn't canceled), my favorite few minutes begin as I turn the corner onto my quiet little cul de sac, see my house straight ahead all lit up, walk in through my front door and see Paula's smiling face. I never knew how important a routine, daily kiss hello or goodbye was until it was impossible. Dorothy was right, there's no place like home.
Stress.
Meetings, bills, deadlines, red tape, paperwork. The same stuff everyone deals with, noteworthy only because this is my blog so I have a license to complain at will.
Politics.
The US Presidential Election is over a year away, and already the candidates are thrashing around the dogfighting ring of debate stages, school gymnasiums, and small town coffee shops with the CNN crew perched two booths down snarling and drooling in some sort of grotesque, macabre waltz of shock and awe, clawing at each other voraciously; whoever can tear the most flesh off his (or her) fellow opponents goes the spoils. The infotainment industry, hungry for blood shakes and rattles the cage in all of our living rooms, whipping us lemmings into a rage against anyone who thinks differently than we do.
The World.
Massive corporate conglomerates beg and entice us endlessly to buy more things, borrow more money, eat more garbage and take more allergy remedies. They coo sweetly from TV screens, computer web pages, car radios, billboards, magazines -- everywhere, every minute of every day. Religious fanatics who believe God personally instructs their every move preach intolerance towards anyone different than they are, plant bombs along roads to kill others, fly airplanes into buildings and wage war on evildoers.
It's time for me to stop. Take a step back. What does all this mean? What is the effect of all we're doing to ourselves? To each other? Does anything we do have any impact at all, or is that missing the point? In the grand scheme of the universe, of everything that was, is and will be -- we make hardly a difference, even the most powerful among us.
And maybe that's the point.
We're all here, together. It's one world. We are all human. Today, more than ever, we have the ability to do such wonderful things for each other, or such terrible harm. The dichotomy of those two halves of our modern existence is as fragile as a soap bubble. Most of us will live and die without making so much as a tiny ripple in the fabric of the universe; somehow, that's immensely comforting to me. I can't change the world, but I can change myself.
Maybe the first step is a step back.
3 comments:
Imagine the difference between dipping your finger into the ocean, and dipping it into a thimble full of water. In one instance, there is no measurable effect at all. In the other, the effect is total transformation.
Perhaps as humans, or at least contemporary humans, we try too hard to impact too much. We dip our finger into the ocean and don't see the dramatic effect we'd hoped for. We turn to beating our fists against the ocean waters in frustration and determination to create a tangible change, something everyone would see and notice. And in the end, even when we multiply our impact by factor of 100, it is still immeasurably small.
It seems like, and I may be wrong, that there was a time when we didn't try to create a measurable change in the ocean. We took pride in the change we could bring to our neighborhood, our block, our street, or simply within our own homes.
Maybe the ability to easily communicate with the entire world has helped us to forget that we each still have an immediate environment, people just at arm's length. Our very own community that is as tiny a speck on the planet, as the planet is within the cosmos.
So maybe, instead of having a tiny effect on everything, we are meant to have a substantial effect on something very small. When you look at the deterioration of the family in modern society, you see people working their fingers to the bone to change the world, while completely bypassing those standing right at their side.
I've been thinking about these things alot lately. And I think you're right. I think there is comfort in being reminded that we're such a tiny tiny tiny little speck. That's not demeaning, it really is comforting like you've said it is. It almost eliminates the expectation that you'll "change it all". It makes it okay to just care for your family, watch out for your neighbors, bake a batch of cookies for the neighbors for no reason, bring them happiness and peace.
I think we're all meant to have a major impact. We're supposed to make big waves. But perhaps in our failed efforts to make those waves in the ocean, we can so easily forget that there's a tiny little pool called "family" where we can make waves big enough to give everyone a good ride.
Great post. Thank's for the thoughts.
And thank you for that excellent and well fitting metaphor. The image of a thimble vs. the ocean is now permanently in my mind.
Kind of like the way that "Ball of Frustration" and "Warm Tin Love" are permanently in my mind.
No. I will never forgive you.
Ever.
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