All the small things…

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“True life is lived when tiny changes occur.” ― Leo Tolstoy

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You’re asking me… as though you think, expect, are more certain than I am that I have an answer. That I have a system, an order, a ritual which guarantees something.

And maybe, in a tiny corner of your eye, in that errant speck of green in an otherwise blue or brown iris, you’re envying me for it without even being conscious of it, such a tiny thing, or knowing me or caring to know me. Dust in the wind.

You’re not even going to bother to listen to my answer to your question, because that is an irrelevant detail to you.

Perhaps it is to me too. Or perhaps it is huge for me… but not for you and so you’ll not notice that your idle query has left me with a gaping hole the size of something very large. An elephant…? A meteor crater…?

It hasn’t, but it might have done so, either way, you won’t care… because you can’t, that would be too much to ask of you. You have you and all that is yours to whittle away any spare attention you may have after you have poured it out into all those empty vessels waiting for such a thing from you.

As it is with me too, and with many… perhaps with all.

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“I’ve committed to nothing…and that’s just suicide…by tiny, tiny increments.” ― Nick Hornby

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And so is committing to everything and everyone. A tiny suicide of self for the sake of the other. And others do this for us too.

All the small things… eventually add up.

And then someone has an epiphany, an Aha moment which erases all the small things which led up to it and helped to make it happen, and all they can see is the big thing.

This big thing which takes up all the space in their mind’s eye, and which then demands of them to expand upon it, take up space in the mind’s eye of others too for it is too big for them alone.

The big picks up momentum, just as all the small things which created it did to make it big, and it gets larger and larger, eating everything and everyone in its path…

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“The Sun is such a lonely star. Whenever he comes out to see his friends, they all disappear.”

― Joseph Gordon-Levitt

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But at some point the big bang fades and the little parts of it come into focus. Maybe not all of them, but many of them. Seeing them, acknowledging their part in the bigger picture, the bang, is of value. As life keeps moving, whether we want it to or not, and there are new small things which gather together over time, warning us of a big event on the horizon. We can see it coming if we listen and notice the small things which lead up to the big things.

Never trust someone who only remembers the big bangs but not the small things which are a part of the what makes a firework display happen. If they never acknowledge the small things, they’ll never acknowledge you and your part in their life, it will always be about them and how they did all of it by themselves. It’ll always be about miracles and magic… which can happen, but only because of all the tiny sprites, elves, fairies that work all night and day to bring it all together.

The tiny sparkles which make the world shine big and bright.

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“What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant.” ― David Foster Wallace

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