The Modest Miracle




         Have you ever thought about the potential you have to change another person's life?  It's easy to feel sometimes like you're locked inside a safety deposit box of your own problems while everyone around you is skipping cheerfully through their lives without a care in the world.  It's easy to think that the interactions that we have with others every day aren't important.  It's hard to see the walls the people next to us huddle behind for security.  But they are there.  Consider these statistics of unfortunate happenings in the United States:


25% of adults have a mental illness

https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealthsurveillance/

A person dies every 12 seconds

https://www.census.gov/popclock/

Around 100 divorces occur every hour

https://www.mckinleyirvin.com/Family-Law-Blog/2012/October/32-Shocking-Divorce-Statistics.aspx

2/3 of people experience at least one traumatic event before age 16

https://www.addictionhope.com/trauma/

More than 1 in 10 people live in poverty

http://geolytics.com/censusdata/povertystatistics.asp


          The point is that if we add all those numbers up and multiply them by the number of people that they impact, we realize that almost all of us have been affected by something tragic at one point or another, often quite recently.  That is truth.  Those are facts.

          But facts can be interpreted.  We can choose to feel discouraged about the amount of sadness in the world, or we can decide to see it as an opportunity to influence others in positive ways.  The moment that a person is on the verge of collapse is very instant they have the capacity to grow the most.  That is the moment when miracles can occur.  The chance to be there for them in that moment and bump them right instead of left and up instead of down is one of the most powerful experiences we can ever have.  Have you ever done that?  Have you had that opportunity?

          If you haven't, you haven't really lived.  The ability each of us ordinary people has to influence others in earth-shattering ways is what makes our experiences on Earth worth having.


          But the transcendent thing about life is that you can have that experience.  No, not the person sitting next to you, YOU.  The person that feels so wrapped up in your own weaknesses and insecurity that sometimes you don't even know which way is up.  The person who often wonders what their life even means.  You can be the miracle for others that you want to see in your own life.  You just have to believe that you can and know what to look for.

          My message, and the message of this blog, is that we can reach people in their desperate circumstances.  Our everyday interactions with normal people are collisions with their catastrophes, but they are also preludes to their potential.  You can be a part of transforming something unfortunate into something beautiful and not just once, but your whole life through. 

          If that kind of thing is your cup of tea, then this is the blog for you.  Individually we can work wonders, but collectively we can work miracles.  Modest miracles.  The variety that most people would overlook but that you won't because you'll finally have the eyes to see them.  Those crystallized bursts of defiance that shout to the cold world "WE WILL NOT GIVE IN," and in response to darkness and distress loves even more deeply.  That's what it means to live.  That's what it means to step from mediocrity to excellence.   That's what it means to truly believe.  And, ultimately, that's what it means to be human.

          So who's with me?

Broo_am, "Small things," https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/legalcode  Ruth Hartnup, "Baby's breath," https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode

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