The Power of Little Things
Catalysts for understanding, gateways to the love that can hold us
There is a lot to keep up with in my country these days. Big stuff. Disruptive stuff. Systems and structures torn apart. No apparent plan for new creation. Indeed, much does need to change, yet is this the way? I’ve stopped trying to wrap my head around it all; I’m starting to find refuge in my heart.
So, I went looking through my “ideas” file to find what I might write about this week. And I kept coming across a very simple quote from mindfulness expert Jon Kabat-Zinn. I say “kept coming across,” because as it turns out, I have added this simple quote to my “ideas” file many times over the last few years. Every few pages, there it is again! Apparently, it’s been getting my attention for a long time. Yet mostly, every time I’ve come across these words, I’ve nodded my head, tacitly acknowledged their truth—and moved on.
Until now. The quote:
The little things? The little moments? They aren’t little.
—Jon Kabat-Zinn
Coming across these words this time, I stopped. Some part of me recognized how true they were for me right now. Because despite all the noise and clamoring in the news media about all that is going on, I suddenly realize that it’s the little things, the little moments that are actually calling me into focus. The big things are just, well, too big. Yet the little things….
I keep practicing living into the “eternal present”—the present moment that contains all that belongs to right now, all that has ever been, and the seeds of all that is yet to come. And in the eternal present, the little things and the little moments are not only getting my attention; they are helping me navigate the big stuff out there in the world.
On the surface, the big things seem so huge that I don’t even know how to begin to relate to them. Which doesn’t mean they aren’t important or that they might not, in time, become very relevant to my everyday life. And it doesn’t mean that I don’t hope that someone who has some sense of how to meet those big things is, in fact, meeting them. Yet staying in the eternal present is showing me a lot of “big” little things multiple times a day.
The little things and little moments show up in all kinds of ways. Sometimes it’s a fleeting heart encounter with a store clerk or a stranger on the street that awakens something inside of me that I didn’t realize was longing to be touched.
Or it could be the synchronicity of an image or topic I see in the media that then, hours later, a client brings to our conversation. And then soon after a related quote just happens to show up in my inbox.
Or someone thanks me for something I wrote and how it made a difference in a particular moment of their lives.
Or I’m suddenly touched by a memory or I feel the unexpected presence of someone dear to me who is no longer walking on this earth.
Or such a simple thing as coming across that little things quote from Jon Kabat-Zinn for the umpteenth time and realizing that I need to pay attention!
Little things and moments become “big” for me when suddenly I sense a more complete picture or get a greater understanding of something that is happening. They’re moments that might not mean anything to someone else, yet they mean everything to me. Moments that catapult me into a different relationship with myself or a different perspective on what is happening around me. Moments that shift my awareness enough that I start to breathe more easily so that I’m able to remain present with disruption and uncertainty from a deeper stillness, quiet, and calm. No reaction. No immediate response. Just clear presence.
In writing about her creative process, artist Katherine Mitchell DiRico said, “I feel very little separation between breathing, making, being, tending, relating.” When I read that sentence, her words resonated so strongly within me. My version might be, “I feel no separation between breathing, writing, singing, creating, coaching, photographing, engaging, being.” For me, it’s all just living. And the more I am grounded in the eternal present, the more I live and create through various combinations of those ways of expression.
Katherine DiRico went on to write, “Reality is always shifting. It is always relational.”
Those two sentences jumped out at me—not because this was new information, but because their message was suddenly landing inside me differently. Being with those words, I realized that the more attuned I am to the little things and to the little moments, the more my relationship with Life expands. I “connect the dots” in ways that I hadn’t before; I look at situations, circumstances, events, and people in new ways. Those little moments may be quiet or hidden to someone else, yet for me, they’re huge. They catalyze shifts in my awareness and understanding. Through these little things, moment by moment, day by day, who I am and how I meet the world subtly transforms.
The little things? The little moments? They aren’t little.
—Jon Kabat-Zinn
All that’s happening so fast and furiously out there in the world right now can get pretty overwhelming. Sometimes even the stuff happening in our personal lives can feel like too much. Yet I’m learning that the more I stay present to the little things and recognize and acknowledge the power within them, the more I’m able to be present with the big disruptions without becoming entangled in the angst surrounding them.
In fact, it’s in the little moments that I recognize once again how much I am held by love—how much I am, in fact, taken care of. And that recognition reminds me to lean into that love and let it hold me.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s poem “How We Are Held” recently landed in my inbox. The whole poem is powerful, yet I’ll share just the last six lines for now.
From “How We Are Held”
by Rosemerry Wahtola TrommerBut I can’t unknow this unfathomable truth:
how love holds us when we cannot
hold anything, gentle as silence,
fierce as a flood, true as the breaking itself.
The way the ocean forever holds every wave.
The way the shore forever changes to hold the ocean.
Her words remind me that deep inside, I do, in fact, know that unfathomable truth of love. Perhaps you do, too. Maybe you, too, have been held in its arms in a moment when you were incapable of holding anything. Or perhaps as you read these lines right now, they become an invitation to surrender to that love—to lean into its invisible embrace. Indeed, it can be gentle as silence, fierce as a flood—one or the other; maybe both at the same time.
Like the ocean, love has boundless capacity to hold all of who we are and all that we experience. And the far edges of its shores will forever shift and change so that they can hold the entire ocean of life that we live every day. Sometimes it takes the little things and the little moments to help us remember.
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I love this, Alan, and I was blown away by what Katherine wrote (her art really reflects her belief, too). I'm reminded of how the flapping of a butterfly wing ripples out over whole world in some way. We are all connected, and when a light goes on for you, it touches us all in some way.
This is very timely, Alan. Thank you. As I woke up this morning with no clear idea of how to deal with some massive systems that are being torn apart, it is heartening to read this phrase: The little moments are what we have, what we can grasp, and when I pay attention to them, I realize they are not little; they are our life rafts.