We so easily get stuck in not changing anything. It feels too hard to change. It´s so big that you give up even before the thought is finished. There is so much else to do: the car, the kitchen, the kids – the kids in the car and in the kitchen, and the dog and the mortgage and ”and”, you know, just in general.
Besides, it seems so big. Famine. World peace. Come on. Nobody can stop that. It´s so huge. Look at all those poor people in Africa. There´s zillions of them. I can´t do anything that really helps them, it´d be like, like trying to fill the Atlantic through standing on the shore and tossing in pennies. Meaningless. Hopeless. Pointless.
None of this is correct, of course. But the important detail to look at here is this: you care. You really do care. I care. Most people care. It´s just a matter of getting better tools to let that care affect the world.
Nobody says you have to fix everything. Nobody said that you, you personally, have to solve famine. Nobody have said that you have to rescue those poor starving children on TV we so desperately try to ignore.
We easily get stuck in matching the size of the problem to an action of equal size. It is easier to do one step at a time that changes the world. Not ten thousand steps at once: it works really well with one step at a time, and then you just slowly and quietly keep doing another one.
There´s an old chinese saying: yi bu yi bu lai. One step at a time. Just take one step at a time and you will get there in the end. Here in the West we often get programmed with having to change something big now, now, and it has to be noticeable – otherwise, what´s the point?
We often miss the lightness and the magic of the One Step. What we briefly do is to get stuck in an attempt to flee the pain. We feel it, we suffer with those who suffer – and then try to cover it up, hide it, forget it. And while this protects ourselves, we forget how much even a very small step can help another human being so very much.
A snowflake of good intention can create a blizzard of help.
Small change becomes big change.
One step at a time leads to big change.
And in that act of taking the One Step we feel how something releases and lightens in ourselves. Your breath releases, the worry let´s go, the head has a little more freedom to stay upright, the neck softens and the tounge seems to shape words better. We have confirmed our own existence, applauded our own humanity through helping someone else.
I have helped someone, therefore I exist a little more today.
Daniel Skyle © 2010
