fate of one
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“The fate of this man or that man was less than a drop, although it was a sparkling one, in the great blue motion of the sunlit sea.”
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T. H. White
<The Once and Future King>
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“The death of one man is a tragedy.
The death of millions is a statistic.”
—
Joseph Stalin
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Ok. I imagine we have all discussed at one time or another the question:“is what I do going to really matter?”
In a world of billions and countries of hundreds of millions it is fairly easy to fall back to ‘do nothing’ because ‘doing something’ doesn’t matter.
We look around and see all the statistics & research and see … well … an overwhelming ‘nothing.’
Sure.
Sometimes we feel despair and sometimes we wonder why it happens or why someone didn’t do something or, well, why, why, why.
Sometimes we see statistics and say ‘why should I do something?’ because it all feels this is “bigger than I.”
It is hard to see that all of us matter and that everything we do matters and doing something that matters, well, matters.
But it does.
One person can be a tragedy … or a victory.
One persons’ fate … even in an ocean of people … is a drop with ripples.
The fate of One can impact the ultimate fate of many.
I can give you a gazillion examples of how & when this has happened, but I would imagine you have been bludgeoned with those examples so many times your only response is:
– Not me, not my life
or
– Someone else will be that one
I have no real words of wisdom to convince you that your fate, the fate of one, not only matters but could actually be the one that matters.
The only words I have are to say ‘it is so.’
While each of us singly seems so small, just a pebble, we are pebbles dropped into the sea of Life from which ripples reach far & wide in places we have yet to see and may never even see.
In addition, as a pebble we are constantly dropping into this metaphorical sea of Life again and again and again.
Moment after moment after moment.
And maybe that is why we so often feel so insignificant. This multi dimensional interconnected somewhat random interaction with Life in which some ripple effects somewhere & someone we may never even meet can be an overwhelmingly small but big thing to warp our heads around.
Suffice it to say: not all moments matter and yet all moments matter. That is the maddening thing about Life.
You cannot know if yesterday’s moment mattered <and fate has been impacted> or if this moment matters <and fate has been impacted> or if a moment yet to occur will be the one that matters <and fate has been impacted>.
You cannot know if your fate will matter or if it will matter a lot <tone one person or to many>. All you can do is assume it does and act accordingly. Assume each day stands still in a long moving Life.
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“Here among the thirty thousand days of a long life, a single day stands still.”
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The fate of one can be a tragedy or a victory but I imagine I should suggest that if you accept your fate by acting and doing what you believe is right as often as you can the ripples of your fate will impact someone somewhere positively.
I also imagine that is the largest argument for significance of one person and one act.
I also imagine that is the best argument for the fate of One.
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