The Faithfulness of Small Things

We have a problem with small things. Not individually, not consciously, not in a way that most of us would own if asked directly whether we believed that small things mattered. Of course they matter, we would say, and we would mean it, in the abstract, in the theoretical space where values are held without cost. But in practice, in the actual texture of the daily choices we make about where to invest our attention and our energy and our genuine creative engagement, the evidence suggests something different. In practice we are oriented toward the large. We are drawn to the significant, the visible, the measurable, the kind of contribution that produces a discernible impact that can be observed and confirmed and that justifies the investment of a self that has been formed by a culture which measures worth by output and evaluates a life primarily by the scale of what it produced.