What is the value in a unit so small it’s only this second?
I often notice in the EQ work I do how the power of ‘small’ is written off. What difference does that minor change make? I’m a believer that my actions really do matter. I really can make a difference and yet… often I think it’s ok not to step up in this moment and do what is needed. Just this once I’ll let myself off or let this slip past. Just this time it won’t really make a difference. Just this once! I know for myself that is often the motive when I do something that doesn’t empower or serve me. What does this tiny moment matter in the BIG scheme of life? I mean I have a whole lifetime of moments: I calculate 1 103 760 000 moments/seconds in my thirty-five years (rounded off for simplicity’s sake). How does the action I take in this moment really have much or any impact on the collective moments?
With a thought all my personal power is drained from the moment. It doesn’t matter what I do NOW. And that is where the trouble begins – writing off what I do in this moment.
This moment is all that matters. This moment is the only moment I ever have with which to do anything. This moment is where all my habits end or begin. This moment is the only place I can do absolutely anything. Here in this second, or this second, or this one. Without recognizing the value of this minuscule, tiny, “insignificant” second in time, I give away my power to choose better, live better, feel better. I guess Eckart Tolle named it well “The Power of Now”.
To demonstrate my point – each moment, each action, each person has more power than it’s possible to comprehend I share a story and a video. I was given this story over ten years ago, but I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time. On re-reading the lesson really resonated. It explains beautifully the power of small – the power of one. One snowflake. One moment. One person. I also include Royal Society of Animation’s talk by Dan Ariel -The Truth About Dishonesty. Fascinating to see the power of human thinking around only a ‘little’.
What if all the change the world needs to make is yours to make? How would you make choices differently if you understood that all you needed to do was make a great choice in this moment? Or right now? Or now?
A Story of the Coal-mouse and the Wild dove.
Author unknown
Two birds, sitting on a slender branch of a tree in winter, have a discussion: –
“Tell me the weight of a snowflake,” a coal-mouse asked a wild dove.
“Nothing more than nothing,” was the answer.
“In that case, I must tell you a marvelous story,” the coal-mouse said.
“I sat on the branch of a fir, close to it’s trunk, when it began to snow – not heavily, not in a raging blizzard – no, just like in a dream, without a wound and without any violence. Since I did not have anything better to do, I counted the snowflakes settling on the twigs and needles of my branch. Their number was exactly 3 741 952. When the 3 741 953rd dropped onto the branch, nothing more than nothing, as you say – the branch broke off.”
Having said that, the coal-mouse flew away.
The dove, since Noah’s time an authority on the matter, thought about the story for a while, and finally said to herself, “Perhaps there is only one person’s voice lacking for peace to come to the world.”