If We All Do Our Part
The great project of life is to become a safe space for yourself and all living things.
Hi,
How are you this week? What’s one tiny-big thing you’ve done?
We were born capable of both beauty and terror, neither of them defining us. The world to which we extend ourselves in each moment can give resonance to any song we sing. That’s why, as the Dalai Lama advised, I strive for my existence to “at least not hurt others” if I cannot contribute to helping.
But of course, like many, seeing the prevalence of suffering among humans, other living creatures, and the environment itself, I seek ways to contribute positively to the world.
It’s the natural urge to help that speaks through us, and yet we might find ourselves questioning or diminishing it. In the face of wars, natural disasters, abuse, and daily crimes, we might feel as though our actions hold little significance.
We look at those on the frontlines of activist movements, those walking solo across continents to draw attention to a cause, those on hunger strikes, or others who risk their lives, reputations, and resources to bring about radical change. And perhaps you, reading this, might be one of those people. But most of us—I’d dare to assume, 99% of the human population—are not.
Most of us go to bed with heavy hearts, wishing our lives could mean something, that we could make a difference, only to wake the next day unaware of our potential to contribute. Looking down at our small hands, all we see is that they’re empty, and that there’s never been enough in them to offer the world. Believing this to be true is what keeps us from embodying our full potential, and often, it holds us back from dedicating our time and efforts to the causes that touch our hearts.
Jane Goodall, a renowned British primatologist, anthropologist, and environmental activist, is one of those people on the frontlines. Naturally, she often meets those who wish to contribute but don’t see a place for themselves. In relation to this, she once recalled, “So many people have said to me, ‘What can I do? It doesn’t make any difference what I do.’ It doesn’t if it’s just you, but it’s not just you. So I think the important thing is realising that what you do, even if it seems small, cumulatively, millions of people making ethical choices is making a difference.”
If we all do our part, no matter how modest, change is possible. Our small hands have much to offer. The key is living intentionally, allowing what we can do to be enough, and developing an open yet still heart.
The effort of dailiness is to make this life possible: to move through it honestly and attentively, letting each day’s effort be sufficient. For it to mean something, it needn’t be exuberant or grand, nor exhilarating or admirable, nor passionate or romantic, harrowing or loathsome. Not “a progressive and cunning crime,” as David Whyte describes it in his poem “Everything is Waiting for You,” but rather “granting witness to the tiny hidden transgressions,” recognising the importance of the daily acts of courageous kindness.
To make this life possible means testing our capabilities, exercising our potential to the fullest, and doing so in every single moment. Everything that makes up the grand happening of life is tucked into small pockets of secret daily transformations—balancing darkness with light. These tiny hidden transgressions, which sustain and expand our lives, often go unnoticed by the stranger’s eye, but that doesn’t mean they are without significance.
What brings about change in the world is what we do in secret. It’s the way we take a deep breath and cautiously allow ourselves to trust in the possibility of good fortune visiting us too, after wading through the fields of struggle for years. It’s how, at night, in the darkness, we dare to whisper, “I love you” for the first time, tenderly and carefully caressing the soft, patterned skin of our own palm. Or simply the fact that, as we drive by a pasture, at the sight of a cow chewing grass with unwavering certainty of her own place in space and time, we smile and mouth inaudibly, “I wish you well, may you bless me too.”
It’s how we eat bread that matters, aware of the hands that laboured and the Earth’s bounty. How we wash our faces each morning, grateful for fresh water and for the feel of our two palms on our soft cheeks. It’s when we see a beetle frantically moving its legs in the air, begging for help, and we kneel down to offer a leaf or a finger of support. It’s how we work with diligence and honesty. It’s in the quiet act of brewing tea, hoping all who thirst may be satisfied. And perhaps most of all, it’s in how we sit, gazing into nothingness, developing the stillness of the heart.
It’s the small, often unnoticed things we do daily that move the whole universe. The difference between seeing them as minute and insignificant, and perceiving them as transformational and necessary, lies in one simple word: enough.
Letting what we can do be enough means allowing the daily process of living to be sufficient and fulfilling in and of itself, and giving thoughtful consideration to ensuring that it brings about good, or, as the Dalai Lama advises, at least doesn’t cause harm. It also means letting go of the desire for this gentle movement to bear any specific outcome, and, again, focusing on what we can offer in this tiny moment. “You can aspire without attachment,” taught Ajahn Vajiro, the abbot of the local Buddhist Thai Forest monastery, in one of his Dhamma talks. “Hope is tied up with attachment. Aspiring contains contentment and carries the sense: ‘I can give into this.’ And a basis of release is the sufficiency that comes with that sense of: ‘I can give.’”
What we give through these everyday acts is not insignificant. They offer grace and softness to a world that has grown accustomed to harshness and rigidity. While big movements and grand actions can often lead to radical transformations and changes in the status quo, they also require substantial resources to sustain, which are not available to everyone.
On the other hand, the power of these tiny hidden transgressions lies in their self-sustaining potential—a snowball effect of simple acts of goodness building on top of one another, naturally accumulating with great consequence, until they become our fundamental state of being: the most straightforward manifestation of life expressing itself through us. As long as we breathe, and life throbs within our vibrant bodies, we hold the potential to bring about change.
So, tell me again: are your hands truly empty?
“The great project of your life is to become a safe space for yourself and all living things. To be imperfect and flawed, to regress and forget, to wander and be lost, to grow weary or unwell, to be abandoned or betrayed, to flush with despair or be paralyzed with terror, and yet wake again each day and resume this project. For each day you are given is a newborn miracle that sings: You still have time to become a living sanctuary. And wouldn’t that be your greatest creation of all.”
wrote Dr. Jaiya John in “We Birth Freedom at Dawn”
The enormity of our potential is not found only in the direct help we extend to those touched by misfortune, made vulnerable and fragile by life’s unfolding, though those efforts matter greatly. Rather, it is revealed daily as we embody the expanse of our beings, recognising that we are meant to give ourselves to something transcendental, sacred, and larger-than-life, but to do so through the mundane, earthly, and modest. It means becoming a living sanctuary for ourselves and others, a safe and holy space for all forms of undoing and unraveling, and then mending and becoming whole again. It is expressed in the way we commit to kindness and openness, especially through the ordinary.
When we live our lives as if they were a sacred, magical occurrence—because they are—we begin to recognise that, since this quality belongs to them, it must then be true for all creation, everywhere. Doing our part in the world might then mean granting this recognition to everyone and everything (our thoughts and emotions included). It’s about entering the delicate dance of opposites—joys and sorrows, wonder and disgust, pain and ease, harsh and smooth, silky and unyielding—and remaining in it, until they oppose each other no more.
It means opening up to the entirety of life’s expressions, of allowing everything to touch us, but holding onto nothing. “Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing,” writes Naomi Shihab Nye. “You must speak to it until your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore.”
That’s how we bring the daily into the sacred, how we become a living sanctuary for all creation and for ourselves—through the openness and stillness of the heart. Once we see that we can contain it all—beauty and terror—we realise we cannot be defeated by either, no matter how they express themselves in the physical world, because there has never been a fight in the first place. All belongs.
What we recognise and accept within ourselves, we naturally cease to condemn around us. And is the gift of unconditional acceptance a small contribution to the world? This is how we birth change in secret—by looking down at our small hands with tenderness and conviction, and saying, “Yes, this is what I can give myself to today, this is what I can weave from my sorrows.”
The real transformation, however, can only come when we truly recognise the size of the cloth.
I spent my late teenage years and early twenties engaged in humanitarian work. There, I quickly learned that the potential for change is not determined by the size of the organisation, but by the size of the moment. And it may be no secret when I tell you that this moment is so big it stretches itself to eternity.
That is to say, there is no shortage of potential for change, regardless of whether we are part of a movement or an organisation, just as there is no shortage of suffering to weave from. “If babies are not starving someplace, they are starving somewhere else,” reminds us Jack Gilbert in his poem “A Brief for the Defense.” And we contain it all. It is not the babies who suffer, and it is not us who respond to them with kindness. It is not one or the other. It is the all-encompassing quality of life weaving presence into all creation. Suffering permeates all, and kindness permeates all. To hold them both with equal reverence is our potential. That’s why, even if there is suffering in one part of the world, which belongs to no one and is felt by all, we, located elsewhere, can still rejoice in the beauty of our lives—“Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not be made so fine,” as Gilbert concluded. This, too, is the expression of life, which lends itself to aid us in recognising the vastness of our potential, the sacredness of everything.
The path of change is the path of boundlessness. It, therefore, also requires forsaking our views and convictions, recognising that as long as we keep them defined and rigid, there will always be someone whose form or sound doesn’t fit our definition of what is good, right, beautiful, or acceptable, causing us to harm them through indirect (or direct) rejection. Similarly, there will always be an action too small or too big to fit into our image of worthy or possible. By holding onto views and opinions, we limit our potential.
Just as letting go of the division between beauty and terror allows us to embody the full expanse of our being, surrendering our rigid views and opinions similarly enables our hearts to slowly become vast enough to contain it all.
When our hearts are open, striving to hold all expressions of life—whether physical, nonphysical, mental, or emotional—we become a safe space for them all. And when our hearts become still enough to move through this vastness, following wholesome actions and choosing to do something good every day, we embody our potential. We do our tiny, hidden, yet significant part.
As Dr. Jaiya John and Jane Goodall remind us, in each moment, our existence influences all of creation; therefore, each of us has the potential to do both good and harm. The change we seek isn’t found in one grand action or movement but in the sum of tiny choices toward more wholesome actions. More often than not, those tiny choices go unnoticed by the stranger’s eye. And still, they are enough. And still, we do our part.
In the quiet, daily transgressions of our ordinary lives, we make the world anew. From moment to moment, we are reborn, and in each rebirth, we choose the song we sing in this world—will it resonate with beauty or terror?
Keeping Quiet
by Pablo Neruda
Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.
For once on the face of the earth,
let's not speak in any language;
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Now I'll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.
Dear Friends,
Since my last message, in which I shared my current financial difficulties, Stacking Stones has gained 17 paid subscribers and is now gathering 412 hearts.
I am immensely grateful for your support, both financial and otherwise, and for the warm notes I received from some of you.
While money is essential to help us sustain ourselves in this economic environment, the true value lies in the community.
I am humbled and deeply touched to be able to say that this community, gathered within the space of Stacking Stones, is truly one of a kind.
Thank you 🤍🙏
Question to you, dear reader:
What song do you sing?
I am so ignorant...I don't know so many things...
I just know that the suffering in this world is healed with souls like yours.
So thank you, thank you, once again and thousands of times thank you for being you, as you are.
Regarding your question...I don't know...maybe aren't we all...singing the same song...the song of existence?
"Rather, it is revealed daily as we embody the expanse of our beings, recognising that we are meant to give ourselves to something transcendental, sacred, and larger-than-life, but to do so through the mundane, earthly, and modest. It means becoming a living sanctuary for ourselves and others, a safe and holy space for all forms of undoing and unraveling, and then mending and becoming whole again. It is expressed in the way we commit to kindness and openness, especially through the ordinary."
this is such a precious letter - thank you for allowing yourself to be