It's the little things...........................

 

......................like telltale brown M&Ms.

on mickles and muckles..............

George Washington’s favorite saying was “many mickles make a muckle.” It was an old Scottish proverb that illustrates a truth we all know: things add up. Even little ones. Even at the pace of one per day. Because, as the Stoics would say, it’s the little things that add up to wisdom and to virtue. What you read, who you study under, what you prioritize. Day to day, practiced over a lifetime, this is what creates greatness. This is what leads to a good life.

-Ryan Holiday, from here

the close at hand..................

 It means that a good person tries to look at everyone with a patient and discerning regard, tries to resist self-centeredness and overcome prejudice, in order to see another person more deeply and with greater discernment.  The good person tries to cast a selfless attention and to see what the other person sees.  This kind of attention leads to the greatness of small acts: welcoming a newcomer to your workplace, detecting anxiety in somebody's voice and asking what's wrong, knowing how to host a part so that everyone feels included.  Most of the time, morality is about the skill of being considerate of others in the complex situations of life.  It's about being a genius at the close at hand.

-David Brooks, How To Know a Person:  The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

small and serendipitous thrills.............

      Satisfaction comes not from chasing bigger and bigger things, but paying attention to smaller and smaller things. . . .

       Once, my wife and I were at the home of close friends, eating and drinking out in their garden.  It was dusk, and they asked us to gather around a plant with small, closed flowers.  "Watch a flower," one of them instructed.  We did so, for about ten minutes, in complete silence.  All at once, the flowers popped open, which we learned that they did every evening.  We gasped in amazement and joy.  It was a moment of intense satisfaction.

     But here's the interesting thing: Unlike most of the junk on my old bucket list, that satisfaction endured.  That memory still brings me joy—more so than many of my life's earthly "accomplishments"—not because it was the culmination of a large goal, but because it was a small and serendipitous thrill.  It was a tiny miracle that felt like a free gift, freely given.

-Arthur C. Brooks, From Strength to Strength

Superpowers.....................

 It’s tempting to want to find the one big skill that will set you apart. But most incredible things come from compounding, and compounding isn’t intuitive because the incremental inputs are never exciting on their own. . . . Most things that look like superpowers are just a bunch of ordinary skills mixed together at the right time.

-Morgan Housel

frictionless................................

     Instead of starting big and then flaring out with nothing to show for it other than time and energy wasted, to really get essential things done we need to start small and build momentum.  Then we can use that momentum to work toward the next win, and the next one an so on until we have a significant breakthrough—and when we do, our progress will have become so frictionless and effortless that the breakthrough will seem like an overnight success.  As former Stanford professor and educator Henry B. Eyring has written, "My experience has taught me this about how people and organizations improve:  the best place to look is for small changes we could make in the things we do often.  There is power in steadiness and repetition."

-`Greg McKeown,  essentialism:  The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

On the importance of........................

...........................................................................Krulak's Law.

Ah, Grasshopper..........................

"We would be humbled to know how little of our daily work matters.  At the same time, we would be surprised to learn which of it matters enormously."

-Michael Wade

Way down at the bottom..................

Speaking of Cardozo.........................

The tests of character come to us silently, unaware, by slow and inaudible approaches.  We hardly know they are there, till lo! the hour has struck, and the choice has been made, well or ill, but whether well or ill, a choice.  The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet, challenging us to be ourselves by appeals to the martial spirit that keeps the blood at heat.  Some little, unassuming, unobtrusive choice presents itself before us slyly and craftily, glib and insinuating, in the modest garb of innocence.  To yield to its blandishments is so easy.  The wrong, it seems, is venial.  Only hyper-sensitiveness, we assure ourselves, would call it wrong at all.  These are the moments you will need to remember the game you are playing.  Then it is you will be summoned to show the courage of adventurous youth.

-Benjamin N. Cardozo

At the setting of the sun.........................

It isn't the thing you do, dear,
   It's the thing you leave undone
That gives you a bit of a heartache
   At setting of the sun.
The tender work forgotten,
   The letter you did not write,
The flowers you did not send, dear,
   Are your haunting ghosts at night.

The stone you might have lifted
   Out of a brother's way;
The bit of heartsome counsel
   You were hurried too much to say;
The loving touch of the hand, dear,
   The gentle, winning tone
Which you had no time nor thought for
   With troubles enough of your own.

Those little acts of kindness
   So easily out of mind,
Those chances to be angels
   Which we poor mortals find -
They come in night and silence,
   Each sad, reproachful wraith,
When hope is faint and flagging,
   And a chill has fallen on faith.

For life is all too short, dear,
   And sorrow is all to great,
To suffer our slow compassion
   That tarries until too late:
And it isn't the thing you do, dear,
   It's the thing you leave undone
Which gives you a bit of heartache
   At the setting of the sun. 

-"The Sin Of Omission"
Margaret E. Sangster

The Little Things...................................

      There are five key relationships:  a relationship with God, a relationship with the members of our families, a relationship with others, a relationship with ourselves, and a relationship with things.  If we fail to follow this order, we can be certain that, sooner or later, problems will arise.
      After all, true happiness does not come from things themselves or from what we accumulate or achieve.  True happiness comes from the right relationship with God, others and things.  Things and achievements -- of course it is always good to have them -- may provide undeniable pleasure.  but it is the kind of a momentary and evanescent pleasure and can never provide the deep fulfillment one is looking for.  Favorable circumstances may produce enjoyment, but they are unable to provide fulfillment.
      If we were overly concerned about big things in life, we would usually miss the little things that make all the difference in the world.  Ironically, these little things can be more important than the big things because they embody, in one way or another, our relationship with God, with others, and with ourselves.  They tell the story of our subtle connections, exhibit our values, and define our very identity.  No mater what, we cannot escape this simple truth:  we do what we are.  Confucius put it this way:  "And remember, no matter where you go, there you are."

-Jean Maalouf,  Your New Adventure:  Make the Most of the Rest of Your Life

Slow down to go fast..................................

"In other words:  you want big results?  Good -- then do the little things.  Just do them consistently and persistently."
-Jeff Olson,  The Slight Edge:  Turning Simple Disciplines Into Massive Success & Happiness

Sweating the small stuff..............................

      "The right choices and wrong choices you make at the moment will have little or no noticeable impact on how your day goes for you.  Nor tomorrow, nor the next day.  No applause, no cheers, no screams, no life-or-death results played out on the big screen.  But it is exactly those same undramatic, seemingly insignificant actions that, when compounded over time, will dramatically affect how your life turns out."
-Jeff Olson, The Slight Edge:  Turning Simple Disciplines Into Massive Success & Happiness

The one percent solution......................

...........................................the improvement of everything.

As a public service.........................................

........14 more things to know about SpongeBob SquarePants.

Knives........................

Knives mattered.  No man should be without a pocket-knife, preferably gold-handled.  How else would you peel and orange, or cut a sprig of privet blossom for your second-youngest daughter?  A blunt knife was not just a bad way to hurt an onion, but sacrilege, and insult to God's creation, its beauty and its excellence.
-as excerpted from this obituary of Robert Capon

Self-directed....................

Words matter..................

George Orwell "famously wrote about how proper language is always the first victim of tyranny."  The following quotes were taken from his 1946 essay,  Politics and the English Language.  Orwell recommended clear thinking, plain speaking, and saw the fight against bad English as "a necessary first step toward political regeneration."  So regenerate yourself.  Full instructions here.  Selected excerpts here:

A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. 

This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house. 

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.

Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. 

Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, ‘I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so’. Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

‘While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.’

 Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

thanks hugh

A difference maker................

thanks david