from the pages…

I started a new book last night.  I’ve read it before.  I absolutely adore it. It’s witty, silly, deep, beautiful, poetic, tragic, inspiring, genuine, and a bit unruly…  the perfect combination, if you ask me.  After reading this portion, then reading it aloud to my husband, who has read this book more than I have, I wanted to read it to someone else too, so this is pretty much the same.

“I read the first chapter of A Brief History of Time when Dad was still alive and I got incredibly heavy boots thinking about how relatively insignificant life is, and how, compared to the universe and compared to time, it didn’t even matter if I existed at all.  When Dad was tucking me in that night and we were talking about the book, I asked if he could think of a solution to that problem.  “Which problem?”  “The problem of how relatively insignificant we are.”  He said, “Well, what would happen if a plane dropped you in the middle of the Sahara Desert and you up a single grain of sand with tweezers and moved it one millimeter?”  I said, “I’d probably die of dehydration.”  He said, I just mean, right then, when you moved that single grain of sand.  What would that mean?”  I said, “I dunno, what?”  He said, “Think about it.”  I thought about it.  I guess I would have moved a grain of sand.”  “Which would mean?”  “Which would mean, I moved a grain of sand?”  “Which would mean you changed the Sahara.”  “So?”  “So? the Sahara is a vast desert.  And it has existed for millions of years.  And you changed it!”  “That’s true!” I said, sitting up.  “I changed the Sahara!”  “Which means?” he said.  “What tell me.”  “Well, I’m not talking about painting the Mona Lisa or curing cancer.  I’m just talking about moving one grain of sand one millimeter.”  “Yeah?”  “If you hadn’t done it, human history would have been one way…” “Uh-huh?”  “But you did do it, so…?”  I stood on the bed, pointed my fingers at the fake stars, and screamed: “I changed the course of human history!”

-excerpt from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,

Jonathan Safran Foer

{Find the book here and more on JSF here}

So, did you get it?  I know that it’s a silly example, but that is not the point.  Do you go throughout your day weighed down by feelings of insignificance or do you dare believe that what you are doing matters?

… no matter how trivial it seems

… no matter if anyone ever realizes all the hard work that you’ve done.

… no matter if you’re going to do the same things tomorrow.

 

It matters.  You  matter.  Now go and have a wonderful life.

-Olivia