To reckon with scale and things that are true

I sometimes think that I can’t hold all of this, my body cannot contain all of this – the emotional impact of the work, all that must be done, all the needs that must be met, the sometimes feeling of too much knowledge in my head. And I know this bursting at the seams feeling is not unique to me, but a consequence of our culture. We hold a universe inside of us, and it often feels too big. But if we take a step back and consider ourselves in scale to both the universe and our world, we may see that it is both too much, and nothing at all.

The practice of reorienting myself to scale began as a student upon viewing the first images from the Hubble Telescope, and in that moment, I knew that I wasn’t fire. I was a spark, the tiniest spark that in a geological, much less universal time scale, was nothing.

Nothing. Our lives are a quick burst of self-aware energy, and then woosh it’s gone, transformed into what we do not know. Where does my grand working exist? Of what importance can I possibly be? On some level, we’re all just out here floating around in the cosmic latte of the universe. But still, consciousness does exist, and our little snapshot of a life matters to us, and those who know us in the almost imperceptible moment of our existence.

Let us shift our focus from God’s grand working to a global Western perspective with a 24-hour news cycle that makes everything seem immediate. Our clickbait sound bite culture encourages fragmentation, not integration, thus producing anxiety and alienation. We are all now exposed to the most body breaking, I can’t breathe immediate shattering of pain on a global level, and the truth is, we cannot influence, impact, or change, 99 percent of everything that we are exposed to, but we want to fix it, we want to stop the pain, and that impulse is good. A reasonably good moral actor wants to help those in need and should be distressed by the images broadcast to us from national and global atrocities. We have been told to be the change that we want to see in the world, and while that is true, it does not mean that our efforts will produce the change that we want to see in the world. The truth is, we are exceptional if we can change our own community for the better, and that is only done through the efforts of community. My grand working is in truth, our grand working together.

But what is our community? Do we mean our household, our neighbors, our town, our state, our region, our country? And here is the trick to knowing our capacity - we can change all of those things for the better given the right circumstances, but our lives are messy. We are a mess. Something has to give, and so, we must choose where we project our energy, our efforts, our time and gifts. Not choosing a thing does not mean ignoring it, nor does it mean not caring, or not having a moral perspective you are willing to share, but it does mean recognizing that you are not Atlas, the world does not rest upon your shoulders. It is enough that our own small immediate world does rest upon our shoulders sometimes.

We can, and should be, politically and culturally aware of our moment in history, and we can choose to focus our small grand working on our local community, in the space where our roots and feet are planted. It is here we can create and grow something good. Even in the midst of collapse we can create something beautiful, for beauty is not optional. Choose where to pour your magic and your love, but choose well, and choose good. Choose sincere righteousness with humility over hypocrisy and find some way to ease the pain of others, and it will be enough. We cannot respond to every fire, and I promise you our lives are too short to waste on virtue signaling. Your small moment in the universe will be enough.

Originally published in the Bennington Banner