My Virtual Reading Room

Some sense of being successful in life may lie in knowing which league to play in. If you are and have always been short, chubby and slow, and your sense of success means playing striker on a World Cup soccer team, failure will be your lot in life.

Wrong league.

However, if you are pleased to play goalie on a local playground team with other short, chubby, and slow people--and you have a wonderful time doing it, then you are a successful soccer player.

Right league.

And the same is true for any sport- tennis, baseball, volleyball, poker or whatever pick a league worth of your abilities and flourish there.

Or, as Epictetus said in the first century BC:“If you can fish, fish. If you can sing, sing. If you can fight, fight. Determine what you can do. And do that.”

Likewise, some sense of being successful in life may lie in knowing on which scale you work best. For example, an astronomer is one whose mind can work on a cosmic scale. A physicist is one whose mind can handle the quantum scale. A theologian, the metaphysical scale. A historian deals with the long picture. A psychiatrist works with the deep picture. A cook or taxi driver attends the immediate situation. Poets and artists operate on a very personal scale.

Many people die confused and unfulfilled, because they spend a life trying to perform above or even below their abilities and perspective, usually a matter of working on the wrong scale.

Epictetus said,“Why worry about a nobody when what matters is being a somebody in those areas of your life over which you have control, and in which you can make a difference.”

Why am I telling you this?

When I arrived in Crete this year I found on my desk a letter addressed to me from a German Scholar who had lived in my house for a time while I was away. She has read my books and reads my Web site journal postings.

After expressing appreciation for my writing and the use of the house, she asked me some hard questions:
Why did I not address the political issues of our time, especially the actions of the present American government administration? Why did I not address the humanitarian issues of our day? Why was I not outraged as an American with the evil done on my behalf? Did I agree that might makes right, that the end justifies the means, and that God is on our side? How can I support the fundamental position of the Zionist Israel? Did I really believe the ‘American Way’ was the only Way? Did I have any real understanding of how America is perceived in the world now? How much hatred and contempt is felt? Why was I silent on these burning issues? Why did I not run for office and do something?

Answer: It is a matter of league and scale.

My mind works on the scale of the local, the daily, and the ordinary.

Writing about that is the league in which I am competent.

I tend to be simple-minded, plain-spoken, and optimistic.

I attend to my corner of the world as best I can with the tools I have.

Of course evil and ugliness exists, as much now as ever.
These get all the headlines. We all know about the bad news.
Plenty reasons for pessimism. The wrongs of the world are clear.
I’m as outraged and frustrated as most of us are.

And I send money and vote and sometimes march in protest.
Still, we shall all die. The climate will change. The seas will rise.
The glaciers will be back. Life will evolve in unimagined forms.
And, finally, the Earth will fall into the sun.

That’s the truth.
But for the time being, there’s what I call The Meanwhile Factor.
Meanwhile, I remain astonished at the good and lovely that exists.
And most of it is free and readily available if I’ll look for it.
Meanwhile, is the league and scale of the amateurs like me.
I do not have the skill to play professional sports.

Wrong league.

I do not have the competence to be an astrologer, physicist, theologian, chef, historian, politician, psychiatrist, cook, or taxi driver.

Wrong scale.

Neither the talent to be a poet, musician, or artist. Nor writer of great literature or even thrillers or detective stories or political commentary.

Wrong ambition.

I am a storyteller at heart. I am a man who goes about trying to be awake to the news of the immediate ordinary world; to make sense of what I see; to pass my thoughts along. I try to answer the Great Mother Questions. I ask, out of amused confusion, “What is going on?” and “Have you noticed?”

And I say, in one way or another, “Meanwhile, don’t miss the good stuff. Pass it on.” If I have a message, that’s pretty much it.

There. Not a self-defense or an apology.

Just a statement of position.
The world and the universe go their inevitable way.
Meanwhile I know what I can do.
Meanwhile I do it.