In The Big Scheme Of Things Quotes

some things don't matter much. Like the color of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person's heart--now, that matters. The whole problem with people is...they know what matters, but they don't choose it...The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.

I had no big plan to become a curator, no great scheme to work my way up a ladder. I was just trying to pass the time. I thought if I did normal things - held down a job, for example - I could starve off the part of me that hated everything.

You know, some things don't matter that much...Like the color of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person's heart - now, that matters.

You think I don't know?' I heard Seth say in a smug, knowing way. 'That I didn't know this entire time I've been gone?' 'Know what?' Aiden sounded surprisingly calm. Seth laughed softly. 'She may be here with you, right now, but that's just a moment in time in the big scheme of things. And all moments end, Aiden. Yours will, too.' I wanted to throw open the door and tell Seth to shut up. 'Sounds like something on the back of a twisted Hallmark card,' replied Aiden.

When you think about it in the big scheme of things our time together is like a dash of spice in a big cosmic soup - important for richness of flavor but still not quite the main ingredient. The past is over. It can't and shouldn't be reclaimed. All we ever have is now anyway.

The ticket to emotional health, like that to physical health, comes from eating your veggies—that is, accepting the bland and mundane truths of life: truths such as “Your actions actually don’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things” and “The vast majority of your life will be boring and not noteworthy, and that’s okay.” This vegetable course will taste bad at first. Very bad. You will avoid accepting it. But once ingested, your body will wake up feeling more potent and more alive. After all, that constant pressure to be something amazing, to be the next big thing, will be lifted off your back. The stress and anxiety of always feeling inadequate and constantly needing to prove yourself will dissipate. And the knowledge and acceptance of your own mundane existence will actually free you to accomplish what you truly wish to accomplish, without judgment or lofty expectations. You

Doesn’t love fall somewhere in the big scheme of things? Isn’t it the biggest scheme?

When you think about it, in the big scheme of things, our time together is like a dash of spice in a big cosmic soup--important for richness of flavor, but still, not quite the main ingredient.

We’re trivial pissants in the big scheme of things, fleas, fly shit in the pepper.

Why does IPCA use them if they’re evil?” he asked, confused. “They aren’t evil. They aren’t even really immoral, per se. They’re amoral. They don’t operate on the same level that we do. For a faerie, the only thing that matters is what they want. That’s their good. Anything else is superfluous. So like how they kidnap people, not a big deal—they want the person, they take him. Or killing someone. If you live forever, how much does one mortal life matter in the scheme of things? When you exist outside time, cutting off the forty years a person has left is a non-issue. They don’t even notice.

You realize how small you are in the grand scheme of things. We’re not really the rulers of this planet, we’re just tenants, and it’s the small stuff, the bacteria and insects and the plant matter that really runs it all. Even the big stuff, the nasty, scary stuff, it’s all pretty small in the grand scheme of things, isn’t it?

In the big scheme of things, all's we really need, is a little love

Saying that “life is short” is such a cliche. And it’s true. In fact, we only have five minutes to be here. In the really big scheme of things, not even that long. We humans don’t even have the lifespan of fruit flies if you look at the bigger picture. In other words, we don’t have a second—not even a second—to waste on petty drama, on living fake, shallow lives, on swallowing our truth, or on hiding our light. We only dance around the flame of this gorgeous human existence for moments and the one thing important at all is loving beautifully.

By the way, I’ve heard what Simon has been saying.” Heat swept over my face. Another problem, but less important in the grand scheme of things. “Yeah, he’s being a douche. I think it’s his friends. He actually apologized to me, and then when his friends showed up, he told them I was trying to get with him.” Daemon’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not okey.” I sighed. “It’s no big deal.” “Maybe not to you, but it is to me.” He paused, his shoulders squaring. “I’ll take care of it.

August says to Lily," You know some things don't matter that much Lily. Like the colour of the house. How big is that in overall scheme of life? But lifiting person's heart- now that matters. The whole problem with people is – they know what matters but they don't choose it. The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters

She was with me the day I went to the paint store to pick out the color. I had a nice tan color in mind, but May latched on to this sample called Caribbean Pink. She said it made her feel like dancing a Spanish flamenco. I thought, "Well, this is the tackiest color I've ever seen, and we'll have half the town talking about us, but if it can lift May's heart like that, I guess she ought to live inside it." "All this time I just figured you liked pink," I said. She laughed again. "You know, some things don't matter that much, Lily.. Like the color of a house. How big is that in the over-all scheme of life? But lifting a person's heart-now, that matters. The whole problem with people is-" "They don't know what matters and what doesn't," I said, filling in her sentence and feeling proud of myself for doing so. "I was gonna say, The problem is they know what matters, but they don't choose it. You know how hard that is, Lily? I love May, but it was still so hard to choose Caribbean Pink. The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.

Funny how a thing like that can be so damned important, but you don't know it's important until an instant later in the big scheme of time. Then you go back and try to retrieve it. You tell yourself it's in there somewhere. But it's really in that no-man's-land of the moment before you woke up and started paying attention to your own life.

In the big scheme of things, it’s the little things that matter

In the big scheme of things, a little love is all we need

Most of the things we often consider “important” really aren’t that important in the big scheme of things.

I mean words don’t stop us from dying. They don’t give us the dead back. Death is the biggest in the big scheme of things.

In the big scheme of things, a lot of stuff that we overthink about in life is simply irrelevant.

It’s not too wild a guess that, of all living creatures, probably not more than one in ten million is a human being. A person is a biological rarity. He is important in God’s scheme of things.

She glanced pointedly at the flopping tadpole. "What?" "Take it back." "You're kidding, right?" he said disbelievingly. "Do we have time?" He considered that. "Yes, but--" "Then, no I'm not." "That lake was three hops ago," he said impatiently. "If you don't take it back it's going to die, and while you may think it's just a pathetic little thing with an abbreviated little life that hardly even signifies in the fairy scheme of things, I'll bet in the tadpole scheme of things it's really looking forward to becoming a frog. Now take it back. A life is a life. I don't care how tiny an almighty fairy thinks it is." One dark brow arched and he inclined his head. "Yes, Gabrielle." Scooping up the tadpole in one big hand, gently enough that it gave her pause, he popped out. -Gabrielle and Adam Black

I’d like to have Luke here, in this bedroom while I’m getting dressed, so I could have a fight with him. Absurd, but that’s what I want. An argument, about who should put the dishes in the dishwasher, whose turn it is to sort the laundry, clean the toilet; something daily and unimportant in the big scheme of things. We could even have a fight about that, about unimportant, important. What a luxury it would be. Not that we did it much. These days I script whole fights, in my head, and the reconciliations afterwards too.

We are all part of the whole, child. Never forget this. Each of us has a part to play in the big scheme of things. Some play very small parts, while others bear heavier burdens. But if one piece is out of sync or missing, the hole it creates is both felt and seen.

According to the rules of comedy, your suffering will be funny after an undetermined length of time. Maybe not while you're having your gangrenous leg sawed off, watching your home burn down or learning how to be intimate with your cellmate, but, in the big scheme of things, soon.

The world is so big, so complicated, so replete with marvels and surprises that it takes years for most people to begin to notice that it is, also, irretrievably broken. We call this period of research “childhood.” There follows a program of renewed inquiry, often involuntary, into the nature and effects of mortality, entropy, heartbreak, violence, failure, cowardice, duplicity, cruelty, and grief; the researcher learns their histories, and their bitter lessons, by heart. Along the way, he or she discovers that the world has been broken for as long as anyone can remember, and struggles to reconcile this fact with the ache of cosmic nostalgia that arises, from time to time, in the researcher’s heart: an intimation of vanished glory, of lost wholeness, a memory of the world unbroken. We call the moment at which this ache first arises “adolescence.” The feeling haunts people all their lives. Everyone, sooner or later, gets a thorough schooling in brokenness. The question becomes: What to do with the pieces? Some people hunker down atop the local pile of ruins and make do, Bedouin tending their goats in the shade of shattered giants. Others set about breaking what remains of the world into bits ever smaller and more jagged, kicking through the rubble like kids running through piles of leaves. And some people, passing among the scattered pieces of that great overturned jigsaw puzzle, start to pick up a piece here, a piece there, with a vague yet irresistible notion that perhaps something might be done about putting the thing back together again. Two difficulties with this latter scheme at once present themselves. First of all, we have only ever glimpsed, as if through half-closed lids, the picture on the lid of the jigsaw puzzle box. Second, no matter how diligent we have been about picking up pieces along the way, we will never have anywhere near enough of them to finish the job. The most we can hope to accomplish with our handful of salvaged bits—the bittersweet harvest of observation and experience—is to build a little world of our own. A scale model of that mysterious original, unbroken, half—remembered. Of course the worlds we build out of our store of fragments can be only approximations, partial and inaccurate. As representations of the vanished whole that haunts us, they must be accounted failures. And yet in that very failure, in their gaps and inaccuracies, they may yet be faithful maps, accurate scale models, of this beautiful and broken world. We call these scale models “works of art.

You know, some things don’t matter that much, Lily. Like the color of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person’s heart—now, that matters.

That’s just a champagne problem.” “A what?” “That’s what my professor calls problems that seem like a big deal, but aren’t in the grand scheme of things. They explode dramatically, like champagne, then fizzle out.

you're instantly in a bind once you arrive here on earth, of need, self-will, a body and a separate personality, even before teh crippling self-consciousness kicks in, even before the seventh grade ... you're fucked at cell division ... it's all downhill from there. After that, it's all survival, and trying to keep yourself either entertained or convinced that the things you're obsessed with are of any importance at all in the big scheme.

Why?” he asks. Here goes nothing. It all comes out in a rush. “Canning, I’m gay. And yeah—maybe that’s not such a big deal in the grand scheme of things. Except that the last time we were here I kind of…pushed you into fooling around with me. It wasn’t cool, and I’ve spent the last four years feeling shitty about it.” For a long moment he just gapes at me. And when he finally speaks, it isn’t what I expect him to say. “And?” And? “And…I’m sorry.

I had no big plan to become a curator, no great scheme to work my way up a ladder. I was just trying to pass the time. I thought that if I did normal things—held down a job, for example—I could starve off the part of me that hated everything.

In the grand scheme of things, the stuff that comes with a forewarning isn't really that important. We know when that big exam is, the driving test, a long-awaited holiday. But birth, death and the police knocking at your door tend to be a bit less predictable.

You know, some things don't matter that much, Lily. Like the color of a house. How big is that in the over-all scheme of life? But lifting a person's heart-- now, that matters. The whole problem with people is--" "They don't know what matters and what doesn't," I said, filling in her sentence and feeling proud of myself for doing so. "I was gonna say, The problem is they know what matters, but they don't choose it. You know how hard that is, Lily? I love May, but it was still so hard to choose the Caribbean Pink. The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.

I had no big plan to become a curator, no great scheme to work my way up a ladder. I was just trying to pass the time. I thought that if I did normal things-held down a job, for example, I could starve off the part of me that hated everything. If I had been a man, I may have turned to a life of crime.

You know, some things don't matter that much, Lily. Like the color of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person's heart- now, that matters. The whole problem with people is they know what matters, but they don't choose it. The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.

As I have often said later, I was thrown into this little dusty town in Gujarat and into the lives of the dairy farmers of Kaira district by what I consider to be a sheer accident of fate – what turned out to be a strange pre-planned act of destiny. I had always imagined that I was cut out for ‘bigger and better things’ – for a glamorous, fast-paced life in a big city, a job with a prestigious firm and the pleasures of the luxurious lifestyle that go with it. Anand did not figure anywhere in my scheme of things. But I had to honour the contract with the Government of India which had enabled my higher studies in the US and therefore, here I was in Anand, a fish out of water.

Alphabet, is worth nearly $800 billion, only about $100 billion less than Apple. How do you get rich by giving things away? Google does it through one of the most ingenious technical schemes in the history of commerce. Page’s and Brin’s crucial insight was that the existing advertising system, epitomized by Madison Avenue, was linked to the old information economy, led by television, which Google would overthrow.

You know, some things don’t matter that much, Lily. Like the color of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person’s heart—now, that matters. The whole problem with people is—” “They don’t know what matters and what doesn’t,” I said, filling in her sentence and feeling proud of myself for doing so. “I was gonna say, The problem is they know what matters, but they don’t choose it. You know how hard that is, Lily? I love May, but it was still so hard to choose Caribbean Pink. The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.” I

Read. Read as much as possible. Read the big stuff, the challenging stuff, the confronting stuff, and read the fun stuff too. Visit galleries and look at paintings, watch movies, listen to music, go to concerts – be a little vampire running around the place sucking up all the art and ideas you can. Fill yourself with the beautiful stuff of the world. Have fun. Get amazed. Get astonished. Get awed on a regular basis, so that getting awed is habitual and becomes a state of being. Fully understand your enormous value in the scheme of things because the planet needs people like you, smart young creatives full of awe, who can minister to the world with positive, mischievous energy, young people who seek spiritual enrichment and who see hatred and disconnection as the corrosive forces they are. These are manifest indicators of a human being with immense potential. Absorb into yourself the world’s full richness and goodness and fun and genius, so that when someone tells you it’s not worth fighting for, you will stick up for it, protect it, run to its defence, because it is your world they’re talking about, then watch that world continue to pour itself into you in gratitude. A little smart vampire full of raging love, amazed by the world – that will be you, my young friend, the earth shaking at your feet.

Anyway, my dad gave me a whole birth-control kit for college, so we don’t even have to worry about it.” Peter nearly chokes on his sandwich. “A birth-control kit?” “Sure. Condoms and…” Dental dams. “Peter, do you know what a dental dam is?” “A what? Is that what dentists use to keep your mouth open when they clean it?” I giggle. “No. It’s for oral sex. And here I thought you were this big expert and you were going to be the one to teach me everything at college!” My heart speeds up as I wait for him to make a joke about the two of us finally having sex at college, but he doesn’t. He frowns and says, “I don’t like the thought of your dad thinking we’re doing it when we’re not.” “He just wants us to be careful is all. He’s a professional, remember?” I pat him on the knee. “Either way, I’m not getting pregnant, so it’s fine.” He crumples up his napkin and tosses it in the paper bag, his eyes still on the road. “Your parents met in college, didn’t they?” I’m surprised he remembers. I don’t remember telling him that. “Yeah.” “So how old were they? Eighteen? Nineteen?” Peter’s headed somewhere with this line of questioning. “Twenty, I think.” His face dims but just slightly. “Okay, twenty. I’m eighteen and you’ll be eighteen next month. Twenty is just two years older. So what difference does two years make in the grand scheme of things?” He beams a smile at me. “Your parents met at twenty; we met at--” “Twelve,” I supply. Peter frowns, annoyed that I’ve messed up his argument. “Okay, so we met when were kids, but we didn’t get together until we were seventeen--” “I was sixteen.” “We didn’t get together for real until we were both basically seventeen. Which is basically the same thing as eighteen, which is basically the same thing as twenty.” He has the self-satisfied look of a lawyer who has just delivered a winning closing statement. “That’s a very long and twisty line of logic,” I say. “Have you ever thought about being a lawyer?” “No, but now I’m thinking maybe?

Zachary had never accepted defeat before. He'd tolerated it in small doses, perhaps, always knowing that in the larger scheme of things, he would have what he wanted. But he'd never been truly vanquished, never known a real loss. Until this, the biggest loss of all. It made him feel vicious and a bit crazed. He wanted to kill someone. He wanted to weep. Most of all he wanted to laugh at himself for being a big sodding fool. In the nonsensical stories that Holly read aloud some evenings about Greeks and their amorous, carelessly cruel gods, mortals were always punished for reaching too high. Hubris, Holly had once explained. Too much prideful ambition. Zachary knew he had been guilty of hubris, and now he was paying the price. He should never have let himself want a woman who was clearly not meant for him. What tormented him the most was the suspicion that he might actually still be able to obtain her, if he bullied and tormented and bribed her into it. But he wouldn't do that to her, or to himself. He wanted her to love him as willingly and joyously as she had loved George. The very idea would have made most people laugh. It even amused him. What must Holly think when she compared him to her saintly husband? Zachary was a scoundrel, an opportunist, a rough-mannered scavenger—the definitive opposite of a gentleman. Clearly Ravenhill was the right choice, the only choice, if she wanted a life similar to the one she'd had with George.

I'd take her to the top of the widow's tower at Ainsdale Castle, late at night, and we'd watch the moon rise. The widow's tower was very high but she wasn't afraid. Sometimes I'd steal a pie from the kitchens and we'd picnic up there. I brought up a blanket, too, so she wouldn't have to sit on the bare stone floor." Mrs. Crumb made an aborted movement, as if she'd meant to turn to face him and then changed her mind. He let the wineglass dangle by his side. "I told her a rabbit lived on the moon and she believed me. She believed everything I told her then." "What rabbit?" "There." He roused himself, straightening. He drew back, fitting her against his chest and setting his chin on her shoulder. She smelled of tea and housekeeperly things, and she was warm, so warm. He caught up her right hand in his and traced the moon with it. "D'you see? There are the long ears, there the tail, there the forepaws, there the back." "I see," she whispered. "I told her the rabbit had lavender fur and ate pink moon clover up there." His mouth twisted, as he remembered. "She'd watch me with big blue eyes, her mouth half-open, a bit of piecrust on her dress. She hung on every word." He could hear her breath, could feel the tremble of her limbs. Did she fear him? "D'you believe me?" he asked against her ear, his lips wet with wine. She was a housekeeper and housekeepers didn't matter in the grand schemes of kings and dukes and little girls who wished upon rabbit moons. But she was silent, damnable housekeeper. They breathed together for a moment, there in the night air, London twinkling before them, overhung by a pagan moon. At last she stirred and asked, "What happened to the girl?" He broke away from her, draining his glass of wine. "She grew up and knew me for a liar.

All of this “every person can be extraordinary and achieve greatness” stuff is basically just jerking off your ego. It’s a message that tastes good going down, but in reality is nothing more than empty calories that make you emotionally fat and bloated, the proverbial Big Mac for your heart and your brain. The ticket to emotional health, like that to physical health, comes from eating your veggies—that is, accepting the bland and mundane truths of life: truths such as “Your actions actually don’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things” and “The vast majority of your life will be boring and not noteworthy, and that’s okay.” This vegetable course will taste bad at first. Very bad. You will avoid accepting it. But once ingested, your body will wake up feeling more potent and more alive. After all, that constant pressure to be something amazing, to be the next big thing, will be lifted off your back. The stress and anxiety of always feeling inadequate and constantly needing to prove yourself will dissipate. And the knowledge and acceptance of your own mundane existence will actually free you to accomplish what you truly wish to accomplish, without judgment or lofty expectations.

Read. Read as much as possible. Read the big stuff, the challenging stuff, the confronting stuff, and read the fun stuff too. Visit galleries and look at paintings, watch movies, listen to music, go to concerts – be a little vampire running around the place sucking up all the art and ideas you can. Fill yourself with the beautiful stuff of the world. Have fun. Get amazed. Get astonished. Get awed on a regular basis, so that getting awed is habitual and becomes a state of being. Fully understand your enormous value in the scheme of things because the planet needs people like you, smart young creatives full of awe, who can minister to the world with positive, mischievous energy, young people who seek spiritual enrichment and who see hatred and disconnection as the corrosive forces they are. These are manifest indicators of a human being with immense potential. Absorb into yourself the world’s full richness and goodness and fun and genius, so that when someone tells you it’s not worth fighting for, you will stick up for it, protect it, run to its defence, because it is your world they’re talking about, then watch that world continue to pour itself into you in gratitude. A little smart vampire full of raging love, amazed by the world – that will be you, my young friend, the earth shaking at your feet.

We have to find a way to push them together,” Minerva said. “You know perfectly well that if Oliver marries, Gran will forget this ridiculous idea of hers about the rest of us marrying. She just wants him to produce an heir” Hetty’s eyebrows shot high. Her granddaughter had a big surprise coming down the road. “And you’re willing to throw him under the wheels of the coach to save yourself, is that it?” Jarret quipped. “No!” Her voice softened. “You and I both know he needs someone to drag him out of himself. Or he’s just going to get scarier as he gets older.” She paused. “Did you tell him about Miss Butterfield’s being an heiress?” That certainly arrested Hetty’s attention. She hadn’t dreamed that the girl had money. “Yes, but I fear that might have been a mistake-when I suggested that he marry her for her fortune, he got angry.” Of course he got angry, you fool, Hetty thought with a roll of her eyes. Honestly, did her grandson know nothing about his brother? “For goodness sake, Jarret, you weren’t supposed to suggest that. You were supposed to get him concerned that she might fall prey to fortune hunters.” At least Minerva had a brain. “Damn,” Jarret said. “Then I probably shouldn’t have exaggerated the amount.” “Oh, Lord.” Minerva sighed. “By how much?” “I kind of…tripled it.” Minerva released an unladylike oath. “Why did you do that? Now he won’t go near her. Haven’t you noticed how much he hates talk of marrying for money?” “Men say things like that, but in the end they’re practical.” “Not Oliver! You’ve just ruined everything!” “Don’t be so dramatic,” Jarret said. “Besides, I have a plan-I laid the seeds for it before I even left Oliver’s study. Come, let’s go talk to the others. It will take all of us working together.” His voice receded as the two of them apparently left the room. “If we merely…” Hetty strained to hear, but she lost the thread of the conversation. Not that it mattered. A smile tugged at her mouth. It appeared she would not have to carry off this match alone. All she need do was sit back and watch Jarret work on Oliver. In the meantime, she would let Minerva go on thinking that finding Oliver a wife would solve their dilemma. That would spur the girl to try harder. In the end, it didn’t matter why or how they managed it, as long as they did. Thank God her grandchildren had inherited her capacity for scheming. It made her proud. So Oliver thought he was going to get around her this time, did he? Well, he was in for a shock. This time he had more than just her to worry about. And with every one of the Sharpe children on Miss Butterfield’s side? She laughed. Poor Oliver didn’t stand a chance.

In the future that globalists and feminists have imagined, for most of us there will only be more clerkdom and masturbation. There will only be more apologizing, more submission, more asking for permission to be men. There will only be more examinations, more certifications, mandatory prerequisites, screening processes, background checks, personality tests, and politicized diagnoses. There will only be more medication. There will be more presenting the secretary with a cup of your own warm urine. There will be mandatory morning stretches and video safety presentations and sign-off sheets for your file. There will be more helmets and goggles and harnesses and bright orange vests with reflective tape. There can only be more counseling and sensitivity training. There will be more administrative hoops to jump through to start your own business and keep it running. There will be more mandatory insurance policies. There will definitely be more taxes. There will probably be more Byzantine sexual harassment laws and corporate policies and more ways for women and protected identity groups to accuse you of misconduct. There will be more micro-managed living, pettier regulations, heavier fines, and harsher penalties. There will be more ways to run afoul of the law and more ways for society to maintain its pleasant illusions by sweeping you under the rug. In 2009 there were almost five times more men either on parole or serving prison terms in the United States than were actively serving in all of the armed forces.[64] If you’re a good boy and you follow the rules, if you learn how to speak passively and inoffensively, if you can convince some other poor sleepwalking sap that you are possessed with an almost unhealthy desire to provide outstanding customer service or increase operational efficiency through the improvement of internal processes and effective organizational communication, if you can say stupid shit like that without laughing, if your record checks out and your pee smells right—you can get yourself a J-O-B. Maybe you can be the guy who administers the test or authorizes the insurance policy. Maybe you can be the guy who helps make some soulless global corporation a little more money. Maybe you can get a pat on the head for coming up with the bright idea to put a bunch of other guys out of work and outsource their boring jobs to guys in some other place who are willing to work longer hours for less money. Whatever you do, no matter what people say, no matter how many team-building activities you attend or how many birthday cards you get from someone’s secretary, you will know that you are a completely replaceable unit of labor in the big scheme of things.

It was, as Berlin remembered it: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” 2 The passage survives only as a fragment, so its context has long been lost. But the Renaissance scholar Erasmus played around with it, 3 and Berlin couldn’t help doing the same. Might it become a scheme for classifying great writers? If so, Plato, Dante, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, and Proust would all have been hedgehogs. Aristotle, Shakespeare, Goethe, Pushkin, and Joyce were obviously foxes. So was Berlin, who distrusted most big things—like logical positivism—but felt fully at ease with smaller ones. 4 Diverted by World War II, Berlin didn’t return to his quadrupeds until 1951, when he used them to frame an essay he was preparing on Tolstoy’s philosophy of history. It appeared two years later as a short book, The Hedgehog and the Fox. Hedgehogs, Berlin explained, “relate everything to a single central vision” through which “all that they say and do has significance.” Foxes, in contrast, “pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way.” The distinction was simple but not frivolous: it offered “a point of view from which to look and compare, a starting point for genuine investigation.” It might even reflect “one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general.

Whatever doesn’t kill you only serves to make you stronger. And in the grand scheme of life, I had survived and grown stronger, at least mentally, if not physically. I had come within an inch of losing all my movement and, by the grace of God, still lived to tell the tale. I had learned so much, but above all, I had gained an understanding of the cards I had been playing with. The problem now was that I had no job and no income. Earning a living and following your heart can so often pull you in different directions, and I knew I wasn’t the first person to feel that strain. My decision to climb Everest was a bit of a “do or die” mission. If I climbed it and became one of the youngest climbers ever to have reached the summit, then I had at least a sporting chance of getting some sort of job in the expedition world afterward--either doing talks or leading treks. I would be able to use it as a springboard to raise sponsorship to do some other expeditions. But on the other hand, if I failed, I would either be dead on the mountain or back home and broke--with no job and no qualifications. The reality was that it wasn’t a hard decision for me to make. Deep down in my bones, I just knew it was the right thing to do: to go for it. Plus I have never been one to be too scared of that old imposter: failure. I had never climbed for people’s admiration; I had always climbed because I was half-decent at it--and now I had an avenue, through Everest, to explore that talent further. I also figured that if I failed, well at least I would fail while attempting something big and bold. I liked that. What’s more, if I could start a part-time university degree course at the same time (to be done by e-mail from Everest), then whatever the outcome on the mountain, at least I had an opening back at M15. (It’s sometimes good to not entirely burn all your bridges.)

I have been in many dugouts, Ludwig,” he goes on. “And we were all young men who sat there around one miserable slush lamp, waiting, while the barrage raged overhead like an earthquake. We were none of your inexperienced recruits, either; we knew well enough what we were waiting for and we knew what would come. —But there was more in those faces down in the gloom there than mere calm, more than good humour, more than just readiness to die. There was the will to another future in those hard, set faces; and it was there when they charged, and still there when they died. —We had less to say for ourselves year by year, we shed many things, but that one thing still remained. And now, Ludwig, where is it now? Can’t you see how it is perishing in all this pig’s wash of order, duty, women, routine, punctuality and the rest of it that here they call life? —No, Ludwig, we lived then! And you tell me a thousand times that you hate war, yet I still say, we lived then. We lived, because we were together, and because something burned in us that was more than this whole muck heap here!” He is breathing hard. “It must have been for something, Ludwig! When I first heard there was revolution, for one brief moment I thought: Now the time will be redeemed—now the flood will pour back, tearing down the old things, digging new banks for itself—and, by God, I would have been in it! But the flood broke up into a thousand runnels; the revolution became a mere scramble for jobs, for big jobs and little jobs. It has trickled away, it has been dammed up, it has been drained off into business, into family, and party. —But that will not do me. I’m going where comradeship is still to be found.” Ludwig stands up. His brow is flaming, his eyes blaze. He looks Rahe in the face. “And why is it, Georg? Why is it? Because we were duped, I tell you, duped as even yet we hardly realize; because we were misused, hideously misused. They told us it was for the Fatherland, and meant the schemes of annexation of a greedy industry. —They told us it was for Honour, and meant the quarrels and the will to power of a handful of ambitious diplomats and princes. —They told us it was for the Nation, and meant the need for activity on the part of out-of-work generals!” He takes Rahe by the shoulders and shakes him. “Can’t you see? They stuffed out the word Patriotism with all the twaddle of their fine phrases, with their desire for glory, their will to power, their false romanticism, their stupidity, their greed of business, and then paraded it before us as a shining ideal! And we thought they were sounding a bugle summoning us to a new, a more strenuous, a larger life. Can’t you see, man? But we were making war against ourselves without knowing it! Every shot that struck home, struck one of us! Can’t you see? Then listen and I will bawl it into your ears. The youth of the world rose up in every land, believing that it was fighting for freedom! And in every land they were duped and misused; in every land they have been shot down, they have exterminated each other! Don’t you see now? —There is only one fight, the fight against the lie, the half-truth, compromise, against the old order. But we let ourselves be taken in by their phrases; and instead of fighting against them, we fought for them. We thought it was for the Future. It was against the Future. Our future is dead; for the youth is dead that carried it. We are merely the survivors, the ruins. But the other is alive still—the fat, the full, the well content, that lives on, fatter and fuller, more contented than ever! And why? Because the dissatisfied, the eager, the storm troops have died for it. But think of it! A generation annihilated! A generation of hope, of faith, of will, strength, ability, so hypnotised that they have shot down one another, though over the whole world they all had the same purpose!” His

It all just makes you feel insignificant, doesn’t it? You spend your life barely surviving the grind, living in an endless cycle, doing the same thing over and over again, depending on drugs and the numbness they bring to see another day… and it’s all for nothing. In the grand scheme of things, you’re nothing.' He thinks on it for a while. ‘It makes a lot of things insignificant, true,’ he finally says. ‘The things we spend our lives worrying about, the pressure society puts on us… it suddenly seems like nothing in the face of the infinity of the universe or the endlessness of time. But look at yourself,’ he says. She scrunches up her face, half frowning, half smiling. ‘Myself?’ ‘Where did you come from?’ ‘The city?’ ‘Before that.’ ‘Eh, my parents?’ He nods. ‘And where did your parents come from?’ ‘Their parents,’ she says, smiling now but still confused. ‘Right. And we all come from this planet, which as far as we know, is the only place in the universe where life can naturally form and exist. The slightest change in temperature or pressure of the atmosphere, and that’ll be the end of us. But it’s not just that. For us to even have the smallest of chances to exist, Earth had to be just the right distance from the Sun, which had to be just the right temperature. Stars had to be born in the first place, atoms had to exist just the way they do. The Big Bang had to happen. For you to even be a possibility, the universe had to be born in just the right way.’ He turns to face her, and she returns his gaze. ‘We’re just two out of billions of people, on a rock orbiting a ball of fire, alive at a point in time that allows us to witness humanity make the biggest, most bewildering discoveries. Two people who could have been anywhere in the world, separated by time, space, circumstances. Yet after all we’ve been through, all that’s happened to us, here we are, now. Sharing this moment together. We’re not insignificant. We’re miracles.

Jones, along with the US military attaché in Indonesia, took Subandrio’s advice. He emphasized to Washington that the United States should support the Indonesian military as a more effective, long-term anticommunist strategy. The country of Indonesia couldn’t be simply broken into pieces to slow down the advance of global socialism, so this was a way that the US could work within existing conditions. This strategic shift would begin soon, and would prove very fruitful. But behind the scenes, the CIA boys dreamed up wild schemes. On the softer side, a CIA front called the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which funded literary magazines and fine arts around the world, published and distributed books in Indonesia, such as George Orwell’s Animal Farm and the famous anticommunist collection The God That Failed.33 And the CIA discussed simply murdering Sukarno. The Agency went so far as to identify the “asset” who would kill him, according to Richard M. Bissell, Wisner’s successor as deputy director for plans.34 Instead, the CIA hired pornographic actors, including a very rough Sukarno look-alike, and produced an adult film in a bizarre attempt to destroy his reputation. The Agency boys knew that Sukarno routinely engaged in extramarital affairs. But everyone in Indonesia also knew it. Indonesian elites didn’t shy away from Sukarno’s activities the way the Washington press corps protected philanderers like JFK. Some of Sukarno’s supporters viewed his promiscuity as a sign of his power and masculinity. Others, like Sumiyati and members of the Gerwani Women’s Movement, viewed it as an embarrassing defect. But the CIA thought this was their big chance to expose him. So they got a Hollywood film crew together.35 They wanted to spread the rumor that Sukarno had slept with a beautiful blond flight attendant who worked for the KGB, and was therefore both immoral and compromised. To play the president, the filmmakers (that is, Bing Crosby and his brother Larry) hired a “Hispanic-looking” actor, and put him in heavy makeup to make him look a little more Indonesian. They also wanted him bald, since exposing Sukarno—who always wore a hat—as such might further embarrass him. The idea was to destroy the genuine affection that young Sakono, and Francisca, and millions of other Indonesians, felt for the Founding Father of their country. The thing was never released—not because this was immoral or a bad idea, but because the team couldn’t put together a convincing enough film.36

Most of the things we often consider "important" really aren't that important in the big scheme of things. Life is as simple or as complicated as we make it.

The decorating scheme of Big World is simple in theme but complicated in execution. The theme is: things that shine and things that make noise. There are mirrors and glass railings and columns of polished steel; there are beeping lights and blaring loudspeakers; there are more reflective surfaces here than on a disco ball.

But if there is one thing we’ve learned from a lifetime of designing and analyzing incentives, the best way to get what you want is to treat other people with decency. Decency can push almost any interaction into the cooperative frame. It is most powerful when least expected, like when things have gone wrong. Some of the most loyal customers any company has are the ones who had a big problem but got treated incredibly well as it was being resolved. So while designing the right incentive scheme certainly isn’t easy, here’s a simple set of rules that usually point us in the right direction: 1.  Figure out what people really care about, not what they say they care about. 2.  Incentivize them on the dimensions that are valuable to them but cheap for you to provide. 3.  Pay attention to how people respond; if their response surprises or frustrates you, learn from it and try something different. 4.  Whenever possible, create incentives that switch the frame from adversarial to cooperative. 5.  Never, ever think that people will do something just because it is the “right” thing to do. 6.  Know that some people will do everything they can to game the system, finding ways to win that you never could have imagined. If only to keep yourself sane, try to applaud their ingenuity rather than curse their greed.

One [of my more common mistakes] would be ignoring the potential impact of leverage. I know the effect goes both ways, but say you do a sum-of-the-parts analysis and think the assets of a company are worth $100. If the company has $70 of debt, overstating the asset value by only $10 makes the equity value go from $30 to $20. In the grand scheme of things, being 10 percent off isn't that big a mistake, but when there's heavy leverage, it is. —Jean-Marie Eveillard, First Eagle Funds

Liberals always have had a love-hate relationship with the Constitution—they love it when they can use it to abort babies or let gay people get married. They hate it when its language gets in the way of their big-government schemes, like censoring conservative media outlets or investigating troublesome, truth-telling journalists. They especially hate the fact that the Constitution explicitly—yes, explicitly—protects gun owners. To get around that inconvenient truth, the left does what it does best: It denies that things say what they actually say, or mean what they actually mean. Or as everyone’s favorite sexual harasser once famously put it, “It depends on what the meaning of is is.” The gun grabbers’ useful idiot, Sen. Chuck Schumer, once claimed that his fellow Democrats needed to admit that there was such as thing as a Second Amendment that gave people “a constitutional right to bear arms.” But before we think Senator Schumer was actually on our side, he went on in the same breath to call for a “compromise” that allowed the left to ban a whole bunch of different guns and thus infringe on that aforementioned constitutional right to bear arms.

Cultural Awareness Capabilities for Social MDM As we have worked with customers around the world, we have encountered numerous situations that have taught us to broaden our understanding, handling, and use of information about people—once again reminding us of the diversity and richness of human nature. Following are some of the things we have learned: • Birth dates can be surprisingly tricky. In some cultures, people have a religious birth date that is different from the birth date tracked by the government. This could be due to differences between religious calendars and secular calendars, or it could be that the religious birth date is selected for other reasons. Depending on how you ask people for their birth date, you may get either their actual or religious birth date. In other situations, the government may assign a birth date. For example, in some rural areas of India, children are assigned a legal birth date based on their first day in elementary school. So you need to exercise caution in using birth date as an attribute in matching individuals, and you also have to consider how information is gathered. • Names can also be challenging. In some cultures, people have official and religious names. So again, it is important to understand how and why an individual might give one or the other and perhaps provide the capability to support both. • In some countries, there are multiple government identification systems for taxation, social services, military service, and other purposes. In some of these schemes, an individual may, for instance, have multiple tax ID numbers: one that represents the individual and another that might represent individuals in their role as head of household or head of clan. • Different languages and cultures represent family relationships in different ways. In some languages, specific terms and honorifics reflect relationships that don’t have equivalents in other languages. Therefore, as you look at understanding relationships and householding, you have to accommodate these nuances. • Address information is country-specific and, in some cases, also region-specific within a country. Not all countries have postal codes. Many countries allow an address to be descriptive, such as “3rd house behind the church.” We have found this in parts Europe as well as other parts of the world.

The most commonly quoted mass for the vacuum is 1094 grams per centimeter cubed (g/cm3) as calculated by John Wheeler who was quoted above.11 We will calculate later that the energy of the vacuum is 1095 g/cm3 by a slightly different method, so that value will be used from here on. As we will see, one order of magnitude difference is not that significant at this point in our discussions. Energy is related to mass by the well-known relation E=mc2. For comparison water has a mass density of 1 g/cm3 by definition. It is impossible for most normal people to grasp just how big a difference in energy there is between the zero-point field and water, so perhaps a simple illustrative example will help. Let’s start with the clichéd drop in a bucket. If the drop is one milliliter (1 ml) and the bucket 100 liters (72.5 gallons), then that gives us a factor of 105. If instead we consider a drop in all the Earth’s oceans, then we have a factor of 1024. That is a lot bigger than a bucket but nowhere close to how insignificant the mass of the drop of water is when compared to zero-point energy. To continue, what if the ocean was the size of the sun? That gives us a ratio on the order of 1041, which is still a long way off. If the ocean was the size of the solar system we get a ratio on the order of 1050. Now if we expand the ocean to the size of the galaxy we get ~1076 and we are still not anywhere close. What if the ocean is the size of the known visible universe? Assuming a radius of 7.4 x 1026 meters the mass ratio is 5 x 1095. There we go. So, the density of water compared to the energy of the vacuum is equivalent to five 1 ml drops of water in an ocean the size of the visible universe. Since we are mostly water and have a similar density to water, the vacuum fluctuations inside our body are like having all the mass-energy of an ocean of water the size of the universe inside each little part of us. Wow, we are pretty insignificant in the big scheme of things and so is any other body of solid matter or any amount of energy associated with it. This zero-point energy is all around us and all throughout us. We are lucky that zero-point energy is not detectable or anything we did would be undetectable noise to any sensor we could possibly make. Even worse, if we could absorb even a small fraction of that energy, we would be vaporized in an instant. Or, if all that energy participated in a gravitational force, the universe would be crushed to a speck.

I think it’s so easy to fall into the world when you’re not ready,” she says seriously. Her free hand brushes over my brows, then sweeps down my nose. “It’s such a big place, and we’re all very tiny in the scheme of things.

The Guildhall was in the middle of Plano, Texas. Plano Texas, is brown and not much else. They have a Frito-Lay factory, parking lots, and a videogame school. At the time, I kept a strict vegan diet and didn’t drive. There was nothing to eat and nowhere to go. But the latter didn’t matter; when you were at the Guildhall you had no life outside the Guildhall. I remember the first day of orientation, sitting in a lecture hall with my future classmates and the spouses they’d brought with them to this wasted brown land. One of the other level design students had his wife and their year-old child with him. “Give her a kiss and say good-bye,” the director of the school told him in front of the assembly. “You’re not going to see her for two years.” I was in Plano, Texas, for six months. You’re at school from nine to five. You stay after and do your work with the teams they’ve assigned you to. Late at night you drag yourself home and do your actual homework. Maybe you get a few hours of sleep. The idea behind the school is that you’re always in what the Big Games Industry calls “crunch time”: unpaid overtime. Your masters want the game done by Christmas, so you don’t leave the office until it’s done. This is why people in the industry aren’t healthy; this is why they burn out and quit games within a few years. This is why you miss the second year of your daughter’s life. This is their scheme: you put up with crunch time all the time while you’re in school, so when you work for a big publisher—or, rather, a studio contracted by a big publisher—you won’t complain about being told you can’t see your daughter until the game’s done. The Guildhall boasts an over 90 percent employment rate, and it’s true: they will get you a job in the games industry. That’s because they will make you into exactly the kind of worker the games industry wants. It’s that kind of school. And it works; that’s the horrifying thing. My classmates were all self-identified gamers and game fans and were willing to put up with anything in order to live their dream of making videogames. That’s the carrot the industry dangles, and it’s what we take away from the industry when we create a form to which anyone can contribute. As long as the industry is allowed to continue acting as the gatekeeper to game creation, people will continue to accept the ways in which the industry tramples the lives and well-being of the creative people who make games, rather than challenging the insane level of control that publishers ask over developers’ lives.

Rarely in history have so many people quoted the United States Constitution and yet seemed deliberately obtuse to its meaning than have the members of the United States Congress. Why that still comes as a surprise probably says more about me than it does about them. Let’s face it. Liberals always have had a love-hate relationship with the Constitution—they love it when they can use it to abort babies or let gay people get married. They hate it when its language gets in the way of their big-government schemes, like censoring conservative media outlets or investigating troublesome, truth-telling journalists. They especially hate the fact that the Constitution explicitly—yes, explicitly—protects gun owners. To get around that inconvenient truth, the left does what it does best: It denies that things say what they actually say, or mean what they actually mean. Or

For that world out there we just saw. For humanity. What’s it been, about fifteen thousand people, and a couple hundred years? In the big scheme of things it’s not that many. And then we have a new world to live on.” “If

Oh, dear,” said Mom when I came downstairs. “You aren’t going to wear that to the dentist’s office, are you? Well, there’s no time to change. Let’s go.” “Mom,” I said. “Good morning. How are you doing? Listen, could I go to the dentist later? Important things to do today.” Mom wearily pointed to the yellow paper on the table that announced, THIS IS A 3-2-1 DAY, in bright red crayon. “Does that mean no, Mom?” I said. “Why don’t you just say so?” Mom shrugged her shoulders and looked at me sadly. “I’m sorry. You’ll have to go,” she said. “I can’t change the appointment now.” I picked up a napkin and scribbled a reply. SO LET’S GET MOVING. And we did, without even time for a piece of fruit. At Dr. Dory’s office, Ellen cried and fussed and had perfect teeth. I sat quietly through the whole exam and he found two cavities, my first. I was shocked! Mom was embarrassed. She pointed to the chart Dr. Dory keeps of all the kids who have perfect teeth. “Now you won’t get to be in the Great Teeth Club,” she said. “Maybe you need to brush longer. Ellen seems to spend more time at it than you.” I looked up at the bright, curved light over my head and thought about the sun shining on the even-tempered Turtle People. They would never get upset over teeth, such a small part of the big scheme of things.

These were all simple acts of obedience I missed. But not missed because I was unaware. They were missed because I was busy—caught in the rush of endless demands. And the rush makes us rebellious. I knew what to do and blatantly ignored it. Ignoring God's leading doesn't seem like such a big deal in these cases. In the grand scheme of the world, how big a thing is it that I didn't pick up that cup? After all, how can I be sure it was really God? I think a better question would be, How can I be sure it wasn't God?

The birds tell me not to worry, that the worries that sometimes overwhelm me are little in the grand scheme of things. They tell me it's all right to be belittled by the bigness of the world. There are some belittlements and diminishments that make you stronger, kinder.

In the big scheme of life, who knows how things will turn out? What seems to be a disaster at the time can bring you joy you never dreamed of. What seems like a wrong road could be the right one. There are no right decisions, only decisions that seem to go more smoothly than others. There are no wrong turns, only unexpected potholes in the road. And at the end of the day, all you can do is keep moving forward even when it's only an inch at a time. - Kiki Lowenstein

An unimportant figure, in the big scheme of things, writes this to you from beyond the grave. It says, 'I wasn't very important, in the big scheme of things. You don't know my name, or face. You've never heard of me, I'm just another soul lost to history But I loved someone very much, And that's all that matters.

All the art experts, all the big galleries, if not maybe quite all of the humble folk who look at them, agree Jackson Pollock’s splatter paintings do indeed count as great art. And JP intended it to be art too. But what’s curious about most of the most radical artists of the post-Second World War period is that they came from nowhere to prominence with the support of . . . the CIA! Yes, the American secret services actively promoted (through books, funding schemes, newspapers and of course galleries) radical art as part of a labyrinthine strategy to undermine the Soviet Union. This was all part of a special strategy to win over intellectuals – including philosophers – described as ‘the battle for Picasso’s mind’ by one former CIA agent, Thomas Braden, in a television interview in the 1970s. Tom Braden was responsible for dispensing money under the heading Congress for Cultural Freedom. Naturally, most of the people he gave money to had no idea that the funds, and hence the artistic direction, actually came from the CIA. Intellectuals and great artists, after all, hate being told what to think. And what was the communist empire doing meanwhile? They were promoting, through galleries, public funding and so on, a very different kind of art supposedly reflecting communist political values. ‘Soviet realism’ was a kind of reaction to ‘Western Impressionism’ (all those dotty – pointilliste the art-experts call them – landscapes and swirling, subjective shapes) and ensured that people in the paintings looked like people, decent, hard-working types too, and what’s more were doing worthy things – like making tractors or (at least) looking inspirationally at the viewer. When Soviet art wasn’t figurative (as this sort of stuff is called), it was very logical and mathematical, full of precise geometrical shapes and carefully weighted blocks of colour.

I am the Lord of little things, the Divine Control of little happenings. Nothing in the day is too small to be a part of My scheme. The little stones in a mosaic play a big part.

the big scheme of things, none of it matters. That’s the sick irony of life... none of it matters. What kills us slowly inside on Earth is all trivial to what happens when we pass on. We are so critical of others and ourselves that we loss perspective. In the afterlife, all of these emotions are lifted, and we are no longer burdened with negativity, and we are

answer. Donald’s dysfunctional belief was related to Janine’s, but he’d held on to it for much longer—a life of responsible and successful work should make him happy. It should be enough? But Donald had another dysfunctional belief: that he couldn’t stop doing what he’d always done. If only the guy in the mirror could have told him that he was not alone, and he did not have to do what he had always done. In the United States alone, more than thirty-one million people between ages forty-four and seventy want what is often called an “encore” career—work that combines personal meaning, continued income, and social impact. Some of those thirty-one million have found their encore careers, and many others have no idea where to begin, and fear it’s too late in life to make a big change. Dysfunctional Belief: It’s too late. Reframe: It’s never too late to design a life you love. Three people. Three big problems. Designers Love Problems Look around you. Look at your office or home, the chair you are sitting on, the tablet or smartphone you may be holding. Everything that surrounds us was designed by someone. And every design started with a problem. The problem of not being able to listen to a lot of music without carrying around a suitcase of CDs is the reason why you can listen to three thousand songs on a one-inch square object clipped to your shirt. It’s only because of a problem that your phone fits perfectly in the palm of your hand, or that your laptop gets five hours of battery life, or that your alarm clock plays the sound of chirping birds. Now, the annoying sound of an alarm clock may not seem like a big problem in the grand scheme of things, but it was problem

The most intensely value-laden artifacts of human creativity - works of art - are now the purist examples of that old capitalist alchemy: turning human value into exchange value. At a certain point, and that point has been passed, the art market will only be a mathematical exchange. Art is worth money, but what’s money worth? Money is the ultimate numbers game. What the furor over the art market brings tantalizingly close to the surface is the fact that it is not just the value of art that is dependant on a shared fantasy, it is also money itself. Warhol is not the name of an artist, it is the name of a currency. “Warhol” is a big number because its denomination (soup cans, Brillo box simulacrums, etc.) is presumed to be stable and growing. But it can inflate or deflate like any stock or bond or national currency. Jeff Koons is also a currency but less stable. The only thing that really changes hands are the numbers that are for some reason associated with these opaque talismans called “artworks.” The billionaire buyers of these works have been reduced to South sea natives who insist on the magical properties of certain queer objects - a cornhusk doll with pearls for eyes and a colourful ribbon about its head - but are unable to say why they are so important or why their world would collapse without them. Investors in the art market need to fear bot only the economic boogies of bubbles and ponzi schemes but also that dreaded moment when they look at one another in panic and say, “What were we thinking? What is this stuff? What could have possessed us to say that a glass balloon dog is worth thens of millions? Sell! Sell!

Who would I be without my story of mother? I would be more compassionate and understanding of her life and her journey to motherhood; amazed at how she managed through challenges; awake to how well she did in the big scheme of things; meeting her as a friend instead of with a “should” club. I would be more curious about the woman who raised me; more grateful for what I have and had instead of what I should have had; more amused at the drama that I’ve watched like an old rerun for most of my life; and for sure, more present to my own life and the bounty of blessings obvious to anyone.

Some days the world feels too hard and heavy, too much violence, too much pain, too much, too much, too much, and no way to make any of it make sense. Some days the people we love the most are enduring deep horror and loss and fear and trauma and pain and there's not a damn thing we can do, not really - and we're left sitting with some crazy helplessness and anger and grief without anywhere that feels big enough to hold it all. Some days you don't know if you want to scream the rage or cry the grief or run to the ocean or collapse in a puddle on the floor or sink into a too-hot bath or go back to bed or lose your mind for a little while, because holding it together takes more than you've got. Some days you feel like you'd do just about anything to have someone show up at your door for no other reason but to deliver an endless hug because reactivated trauma is a bitch, even when it's not your own, and because we all need more hugs, even on the good days—and some days are as far as hell from good as you can imagine. Some days you buy yourself the pale pink roses because you need a reminder of beauty, and you make yourself cup after cup of tea and finally let yourself cry, hard. You take the invite to go out to dinner and laugh and forget for a while. You pay attention, with deep gratitude, to the spaces that feel safe enough to open fully into, and to the people that show up to fill those spaces. You do what you can even though it feels like way too little and not near enough and not anything really in the grand scheme of things, and you say a prayer of thanks for the people give without knowing even why they are giving and a blessing for the grace of connections that are strong enough for that. Whatever you're doing right now, send a wave of love out into the universe. The biggest and brightest one you've got. Send protection, and healing, and fire, and light, and love and love and love and love. I can't tell you where you're sending it, but I know there's enough hurt and hard in the world right now, that whatever direction it goes and wherever it lands, it will rest with someone who needs it.

In the big scheme of things, fly-fishing has no importance at all, and neither does anything else from grilling burgers to brain surgery. After all, in time we all get hungry again, and in the long run the patient eventually dies, even if just from old age. Everything in life is a delaying action. It’s all just something to do while our atoms unravel. So, if I have my choice, and these days I do, I’d rather go fishing than almost anything else.

In the larger scheme of things, it’s nothing: to lose one month’s worth of pension when you’ve been earning for more than four decades. But, as is the way of loss, it is rarely about the absolute nature of the loss itself or its magnitude, and more about how victimized we feel.

Sure, this was a small thing in the grand scheme of things. But little things led to big things. Until one day, everything is different.

It’s a lot like when we screwed the climate, to be honest. You never think you’re going to affect something as big as that. I mean, I’m just burning a little coal here, right? The planet’s very big, this piece of coal or cup of oil or forest of trees, it can’t be important in the grand scheme of things. A weird blind spot for a species all too happy to consider itself the centre of the universe in every other way.

Okay, okay, that’s not a big deal really, in the scheme of you know, life. I mean, there are wars and starvation, so sexual preference isn’t a big thing. You don’t have to label it. What’s important is you seem okay.” He leans toward me, examining my face. “You look intact. No huge identity crisis, right?

In my world, where my role was big—the boss, creator, CEO—having the reminder I was nothing more than a piece of dust in the grand scheme of things kept me grounded. It gave me peace.

It all just makes you feel insignificant, doesn’t it? You spend your life barely surviving the grind, living in an endless cycle, doing the same thing over and over again, depending on drugs and the numbness they bring to see another day… and it’s all for nothing. In the grand scheme of things, you’re nothing.' He thinks on it for a while. ‘It makes a lot of things insignificant, true,’ he finally says. ‘The things we spend our lives worrying about, the pressure society puts on us… it suddenly seems like nothing in the face of the infinity of the universe or the endlessness of time. But look at yourself,’ he says. She scrunches up her face, half frowning, half smiling. ‘Myself?’ ‘Where did you come from?’ ‘The city?’ ‘Before that.’ ‘Eh, my parents?’ He nods. ‘And where did your parents come from?’ ‘Their parents,’ she says, smiling now but still confused. ‘Right. And we all come from this planet, which as far as we know, is the only place in the universe where life can naturally form and exist. The slightest change in temperature or pressure of the atmosphere, and that’ll be the end of us. But it’s not just that. For us to even have the smallest of chances to exist, Earth had to be the right distance from the Sun, and the Sun had to be the right size and age. Stars had to be born in the first place, atoms had to exist exactly like they do. The Big Bang had to happen. For you to even be a possibility, the universe had to be born in just the right way.’ He turns to face her, and she returns his gaze. ‘We’re just two out of billions of people, on a rock orbiting a ball of fire, alive at a point in time that allows us to witness humanity make the biggest, most bewildering discoveries. Two people who could have been anywhere in the world, separated by time, space, circumstances. Yet after all we’ve been through, all that’s happened to us, here we are, now. Sharing this moment together. We’re not insignificant. We’re miracles.

But that’s not the whole story. The news is not and never has been, because it doesn’t talk about the small moments. Moments that matter to individuals, whatever they do or do not do in the grand scheme of things. And it is those individual moments that belong to people, that deserve to be faced and remembered as much as every big, world-changing disaster. And nature, because it exists in the details, is so easy to elide, even when trying to talk about it.

I don’t want to miss out on the best things in life because I’m holding on too tight to the things I already have, things like my house, things that don’t matter in the big scheme of things.

Past the old brick walls and lovely close-clipped hedges separating the different parts of the Italian gardens, the young people strolled to the rose arbors, scenes of a thousand thousand blossoms in the earlier part of the year. Retracing their steps back past the geranium beds, they walked on over the lush green grass to a sundial. Simultaneously and haltingly, as they made out the hewn words, they began to read aloud the quaint inscription cut from the gray stone: "Hours Fly, Flowers Die... New Days, New Ways, Love Stays." The spoken words, deep with meaning, seemed to ring reverberatingly for a moment over the old timepiece which had seen so many hours fly, and so many flowers die. Still facing the old sundial together, Allen slipped an arm about Laura and drew her close. "Stay Laura," he said suddenly. "Don't go. Stay and make a home with me . . . as they did. After all,--it's best." For a brief moment Laura rested her check against Allen's arm, felt the touch of something big and beyond her. In that fraction of a minute she had the sensation of being swept on to some new existence, in which she was greater than herself, larger than humanity. The feeling of a great contentment came upon her. In that brief space of time she seemed to have slipped into her place in the scheme of things. It was as though she were the center of all existence, the reason for a Great Plan.

Helen?" I asked. "Andrew! Are you okay? What happened?" "Nothing, this whole thing was just a big misunderstanding. They actually wanted to try to interest us in a multi-level marketing scheme, but they got mixed up and tried to kill us instead.

Economics is a notoriously complicated subject. To make things easier, let’s imagine a simple example. Samuel Greedy, a shrewd financier, founds a bank in El Dorado, California. A. A. Stone, an up-and-coming contractor in El Dorado, finishes his first big job, receiving payment in cash to the tune of $1 million. He deposits this sum in Mr Greedy’s bank. The bank now has $1 million in capital. In the meantime, Jane McDoughnut, an experienced but impecunious El Dorado chef, thinks she sees a business opportunity – there’s no really good bakery in her part of town. But she doesn’t have enough money of her own to buy a proper facility complete with industrial ovens, sinks, knives and pots. She goes to the bank, presents her business plan to Greedy, and persuades him that it’s a worthwhile investment. He issues her a $1 million loan, by crediting her account in the bank with that sum. McDoughnut now hires Stone, the contractor, to build and furnish her bakery. His price is $1,000,000. When she pays him, with a cheque drawn on her account, Stone deposits it in his account in the Greedy bank. So how much money does Stone have in his bank account? Right, $2 million. How much money, cash, is actually located in the bank’s safe? Yes, $1 million. It doesn’t stop there. As contractors are wont to do, two months into the job Stone informs McDoughnut that, due to unforeseen problems and expenses, the bill for constructing the bakery will actually be $2 million. Mrs McDoughnut is not pleased, but she can hardly stop the job in the middle. So she pays another visit to the bank, convinces Mr Greedy to give her an additional loan, and he puts another $1 million in her account. She transfers the money to the contractor’s account. How much money does Stone have in his account now? He’s got $3 million. But how much money is actually sitting in the bank? Still just $1 million. In fact, the same $1 million that’s been in the bank all along. Current US banking law permits the bank to repeat this exercise seven more times. The contractor would eventually have $10 million in his account, even though the bank still has but $1 million in its vaults. Banks are allowed to loan $10 for every dollar they actually possess, which means that 90 per cent of all the money in our bank accounts is not covered by actual coins and notes.2 If all of the account holders at Barclays Bank suddenly demand their money, Barclays will promptly collapse (unless the government steps in to save it). The same is true of Lloyds, Deutsche Bank, Citibank, and all other banks in the world. It sounds like a giant Ponzi scheme, doesn’t it? But if it’s a fraud, then the entire modern economy is a fraud. The fact is, it’s not a deception, but rather a tribute to the amazing abilities of the human imagination. What enables banks – and the entire economy – to survive and flourish is our trust in the future. This trust is the sole backing for most of the money in the world.

The rare people who do become truly exceptional at something do so not because they Believe they’re exceptional. On the contrary, they become amazing because they’re obsessed with improvement. And that obsession with improvement stems from an unerring belief that they are, in fact, not that great at all. It’s anti-entitlement. People who become great at something become great because they understand that they’re not already great—they are mediocre, they are average—and that they could be so much better. All of this “every person can be extraordinary and achieve greatness” stuff is basically just jerking off your ego. It’s a message that tastes good going down, but in reality is nothing more than empty calories that make you emotionally fat and bloated, the proverbial Big Mac for your heart and your brain. The ticket to emotional health, like that to physical health, comes from eating your veggies—that is, accepting the bland and mundane truths of life: truths such as “Your actions actually don’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things” and “The vast majority of your life will be boring and not noteworthy, and that’s okay.” This vegetable course will taste bad at first. Very bad. You will avoid accepting it.

It would be painful and probably embarrassing–no, not embarrassing, because only I controlled whether or not I was embarrassed. And I could do this. And I wouldn't be embarrassed. Even if I was, just a little, it didn't matter in the big scheme of things. This speech wasn't forever. Being embarrassed was not forever. None of this was forever. But trying was. Living was.

How you feel is not necessarily how it is. In fact, going by feel without having an idea of where you are in the scheme of things will often get you in very big trouble in life as well as in aviation.