Big & Small things
A number of Big things happened this week - in the world, in my country and, funnily enough, the project we have been working on. There were also innumerable Small things that accompanied these events, but unfortunately by nature of being Small they have been glossed over and mostly forgotten. To summon them back to the land of the living I now need to dredge them up from the bottom of the barrel that is my brain on a Sunday evening.
I have been thinking, questioning, my categorization of Big and Small things. Many years ago I read a book which asked the reader the question: If you had a newspaper in front of you with (1) news about a natural disaster in a faraway country and (2) a report about a fire in the neighbouring town, which article would you read first? ... For most people it's usually (2), apparently, which highlights how we prioritize/perceive importance based on the relative closeness of something to us. We magnify, selfishly.
In that vein, the Biggest thing that happened this week for me was ostensibly a major client Steering Committee meeting where we presented the work we've done over the past twelve weeks. But I think the Key Moment actually happened before the meeting, when my team dialed in 15 minutes early and found that one of our global trade experts was also in the call early. He was calling in from Canada and discussion turned to the poppy he had on his lapel for Remembrance Day - a commemoration of the fallen during World War I (side note: I know we did not have a role in that war but it is really quite sad that November 11 is probably better known here for being an e-commerce sale bonanza). I recalled my secondary school literature classes (or were they history ones?) where we read In Flanders Fields and looked up the poem there and then for good measure. At some point he apologized for taking the conversation in a decidedly non-SteerCo direction, to which I replied that honestly, this was probably a good thing - to be reminded that there is so much more going on in the world at a moment when a 90 minute meeting threatens to make your heart hammer out of your chest.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
In Flanders Fields, by John McCrae
The night before I had actually picked up one of my favourite books, Liturgy of the Ordinary, and read the last chapter on Sleep & Rest. One of the themes that Tish Harrison Warren dwells on is the uncanny resemblance between sleep and death - after all, what is death but a long, unending sleep? In sleep we dip below the surface, call for a stop to all the processes that seem to make up life - thinking, doing, even feeling. It's in sleep, therefore, that we are most vulnerable and fragile, as the author suggests - and in the act of surrendering to sleep, we also surrender our fragile and finite selves to God, trusting that He will allow us to wake the next morning. Morbid, perhaps, but actually comforting to me. Reminded of death, reminded of the vast sweep of human life, I wasn't so sure then of what was really Big and Small in my day, in my life.
I would like to question this more, interrogate where I spend my time and resources and mindspace: What really are the Big and Small things around me? What makes them Big or Small? The challenge, of course, is that many Big things seem Big because we're just looking at them from really up close. Also that Big things are often a collection of Small ones, so if we break down the Big things, which seemingly Small things actually make the Big thing Big? And do I need to reassess my definition of Bigness?
There are so many structures around us that give a shortcut mental model of what is Big - career, money, moments when our pride and reputation and success is at stake. Can we question those models, cut away the fat, get to what really matters - the meaning of the work that we do (and in this I count work in the traditional sense but also the work of everything else we put in effort to move along in our lives - relationships, activities, the choices we make), and the people we do it for?