Size Matters

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They Ask: What Have You Accomplished?
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You sitting there. Me sitting here. Both of us paused in a freeze frame of respite (and reflection?).

I can tell that they have been asking you the wrong questions. You have heard them because your ear is so well trained to the tones and the cadences they offer you.

These aren’t the things they say: (but they should:)

Have you been diligent and true with what you had?

Have you pushed a little farther than you thought you could?

Did you struggle to keep your eyes open even past the moment where awake started bending at the edges into your dreams?

Did you defer the bathroom break just past the point of uncomfortable? So you could get a little further? (not that it mattered in retrospect)

How many lines did you strikethrough your to-do list? (they ask.)

How many times has that list crucified you? (I counter.)

Do you ever lay under it at night like several feet of packed down soil?

Cold undisturbed soil?

When you look at what everyone else is getting done, and you tell yourself that its more than you’ll ever manage to do….

When you feel like you’re trying to walk forward in chest-deep water, but the water’s thickening with every step…

When you feel like it would take an entire universe of energy, an impossible nother Big Bang for you to stand up out of that chair, to push the sleep up and back and out of your eyes, to turn one more page, to make one more call, to get into your car one more time…

Because if they ever understood the true maths of it, they would understand that you didn’t start out with all of the opportunity, all of the resources, all of the possibility (like an undefiled and inviting whiteboard) that they had.

If they were sensitive or observant, they could see, like I can that every little bit counts for something. It’s the moving forward, not the finishing that’s worth comment.

"Finishing" is arbitrary, fictional and completely abstract.

Action? That’s something worthwhile.

Size matters.

But only to them. And they're blind to all but their own vision.