Little By Little

Blog 1627 – 03.04.2020

Little By Little

It is the way it is always done. Even the very biggest things in our lives only come after little by little we are prepared to receive and accept them. Doctors are not the only ones who require patients for patience we all require. The old book says, “Trouble works patience and patience experience and experience hope.” Some people think science and faith are totally opposed, true science and true faith are not. True science does not believe that accidents or coincidences keep happening until something evolves, true science believes like faith that everything is cause and effect – this happened because that happened first.

A lot of little things have to happen first before that magical first Christmas bike shows up under your tree, and, please, those of all faiths other than Christian translate that into your own gift giving and getting traditions. All I am saying is that everything that comes to us comes little by little. Even and especially happiness or unhappiness is a progression. It is never one thought or incident that causes, makes us, or keeps us continuing to be either. Like the tiny seeds sown in early spring, the tiny drops of rain that reach them in the soil, and the gradual warming temperature from the sun to incubate and cause them to reach upwardly, everything happens little by little.

Want a big change in your life, start doing little things, taking little steps to prepare yourself for its arrival. What many think is the littlest step of all is really the biggest, a small change of thought. Look back over the biggest victories or defeats of your life and I guarantee you that each one of those successes and likewise defeats began not with a big important act or step but just a slight change of view, a small change of mind.

One of the expressions that I first heard as a child that has inspired and stayed with me all these almost seventy years of this particular adventure is: “Before you were a twinkle in your father’s eye.” I love the very idea of my father and yes my mother’s eyes twinkling because their minds entertained a new thought. Life as we know it begins with such pregnant thoughts and then a tiny egg and and even tinier strong swimming seed get together and begin to grow, little by little, into a new fully formed unique baby, ready to come out and play.

Few of us remember how many little acts of courage and determination came before that first shaky step we took as a child. Mothers watch all those little things more carefully than most fathers they say, but I am not so sure. I remember marveling at both my daughter and later my son as they moved toward that “first giant step for mankind” as astronaut Allan Shepherd remarked before his first step on the moon. Alan, too, had many many steps before that one but none bigger, even that, than his first baby step.

Baby steps, little by little, is how life happens and continues to happen till we lay this body down for I think another one, another adventure starting out as an egg and seed growing little by little, the circle of life. There is a song, first published in 1953 and recorded in 1954, called “Little Things Mean A Lot.” I end with a quote from it ( I started to just quote a few lines but here is the whole song and even a picture of the lovely lady who first recorded it, many famous recording artists followed):