{"id":3930,"date":"2013-12-21T23:29:55","date_gmt":"2013-12-22T04:29:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=3930"},"modified":"2013-12-21T23:35:34","modified_gmt":"2013-12-22T04:35:34","slug":"sweat-the-little-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=3930","title":{"rendered":"Sweat the Little Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a nice article in The Atlantic about John Kerry’s term<\/a> as Secretary of State. The former Senator is really out there trying to change the world. Even as a 70 year old, he can still stay up all night when in the thick of an important negotiation. He’s living a life all about big things. <\/p>\n

Life for most of us, by comparison, is about little things. When young, I dreamed of being involved in big, momentous, world-shaking causes. Things that you read about or see in the movies \u2013 Lincoln, Obama, the great explorers, great scientists, great writers, great lovers, great artists, the people with passion and vision, people living with a drive and a goal. These are people who somehow found their way into some big cause (or were found by some big cause) that sucked up their day-to-day life, and in return amplified the feeling of being alive for them.<\/p>\n

As to the rest of us \u2013 well, as to me, anyway — I never come across a big compelling mission or cause in life comparable to what Mr. Kerry now deals with. My life is mostly a case of making the best of little things, making the best of imperfect situations, and being wide open to the slings and arrows of life. (The important people usually get protected from distracting stuff like parking tickets and paying for an emergency root canal by others; the rest of us have to take on these many slings and arrows alone). <\/p>\n

But nonetheless . . . in the end, perhaps the little things ain\u2019t so little after all. Let\u2019s hope. Maybe you’ve heard the St. Francis-like quote: do few things but do them well<\/strong>. This is actually a line from a song<\/a> by Donovan<\/a> (yes, the same guy who sang “Mellow Yellow”) in a Saint Francis movie called “Brother Sun Sister Moon<\/a>” from 1972.<\/p>\n

On the Zen front, the “teachers” often talk about savoring the little things<\/a>. They want us to notice the tiniest joys like the first sip of hot coffee on a cold morning. The only problem with that — something the Zen people seem to gloss over — is that for every nice little thing, there’s some not-so-nice thing. Something that brings pain or anxiety or is just a pain in the butt. Let’s go back to that coffee on the cold morning. After you finish the java, you may have to go outside and shovel snow that is blocking in your car. If the feel of rain on the skin is lovely, the feel of a mosquito or a wasp on it is not. Zen tries to put a good spin on the quotidian, but often backfires.<\/p>\n

Zen backfires because it tries to be “stark”, to present things as they are, unadorned. And in this life, a lot of those unadorned things aren’t very pleasant. We have to transcend Zen to really find light amidst the desultory mix of good and bad little things that make up our daily lives. St. Francis, I think, did a better job of making life meaningful in the face of a seemingly meaningless mix of little events and factors. We are not going to be John Kerry’s or LeBron James’s or YoYo Ma’s; we are going to be left alone to our little stuff, to try to make some sense of them. <\/p>\n

For those who can and do find that “sense” — they come close to what the Zennie’s call “enlightenment”. They are doing something that the John Kerry’s and LeBron James’s aren’t good at — digging deep into the soul searching for a core reason to be. Not all of us find it, but the door is open. Those of us left to the mercy of the little things might well be a step or two closer to it than the important people, wrapped up in their big causes.<\/p>\n

So, smile at the little joys, grimace at the little pains, and don’t give up on that small voice within, that small voice in the silence crying out: it’s all a big deal, it’s all important. Do those little things, and do them well. They really are important — even if they don’t get an article in The Atlantic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a nice article in The Atlantic about John Kerry’s term as Secretary of State. The former Senator is really out there trying to change the world. Even as a 70 year old, he can still stay up all night when in the thick of an important negotiation. He’s living a life all about big […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3930"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3930"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3932,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3930\/revisions\/3932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}