In the movie Chocolat, a single mother and her six year old daughter move to a small town in rural France and open a chocolate shop.
The townspeople initially shun her and the shop. She’s open on Sundays, selling chocolate during Lent, and has no husband.
She’s sin on two feet.
But, gradually, she wins them over as they fall in love with her special form of chocolate. She transforms ordinary chocolate into something extraordinary by sprinkling just a pinch of chili powder into the blend.
Sometimes little things are big things.
I was standing in a large lecture room in Cottonwood Hospital in Murray, Utah conducting a seminar for physical therapists.
The back wall of the room was a series of several large window panes looking out on white covered mountains.
I looked up and stopped talking. The snow flakes were huge. It seemed as if someone had taken a cookie cutter to a trillion bars of soap and dropped the shapes from the sky.
I had never seen snow like this and I grew up in snow country. It couldn’t be a good sign.
The snow continued and the mountains now faded into the background behind a curtain of cookie cutter sized snowflakes. I suggested to the class that perhaps we should adjourn so everyone could get home. But a student said, “No, we don’t need to. It’s big snow.”
“Big snow? What’s big snow?” I asked.
“There’s a Native American expression, ‘Little snow, big snow. Big snow, little snow.’ This is big snow. It won’t be a problem.”
And he was right.
Sometimes big things are little things.
When it comes to your life, your health and fitness, I’ve found that sometimes we lose sight of the big things because of all the little things that we think are so important. And sometimes we miss how important little things can be and totally screw up the big things.
Some chase the “ideal” body, what we see in the movies, on TV, in magazines, on the Internet, because we think we’ll finally feel better about who we are, that other people will praise us, value us, love us.
That’s a little thing; a little thing we give too much time and energy to because we think it’s a big thing.
Being comfortable with who you are and owning who you are, that’s a big thing.
Loving yourself enough to take care of yourself, that’s a big thing. But we think “loving myself” sounds weird or selfish or it’s too vague and simple. How could such a little thing change anything in my life?
Caring enough about your body to heed it’s warnings, that’s a big thing. But the signals are often subtle and such little messages we ignore them: the aching or stiffness in a joint, the pain in a shoulder when you lift a coffee pot, the tightness in your hamstrings for no apparent reason.
“Little snow”.
Counting every calorie you consume and every calorie you expend day after day after day, that’s a little thing we think is a big thing. And when you have to go to dinner and can’t count the calories, your mind is cluttered with anxiety. A sure sign it’s a little thing.
Paying attention to eating the best food for you, when you feel full, not eating to relieve stress, little things that create big changes.
An Example From My Life
I have a bunch of things in my life that I thought were big things. They weren’t really. And it’s not pretty but its true.
Here’s one.
And I have to preface this by saying, and this will make a lot more sense in about ten seconds, that in my mind, I shouldn’t have to tell you this. A person in my “position”- whatever that is – shouldn’t tell you this. Telling you makes me quake with fear that you’ll think, “Oh my God! What a total flake! I’m bailing on this guy!”
So here we go…
Earlier in my career, I thought by knowing more than the average therapist, I would be respected, successful and people would like me.
I studied…a lot. Got up at 3 or 4AM, read all sorts of text books then went to work until 7-8 PM. And did this for years.
I never thought about what I was eating, or any kind of structured exercise and what the hell is “life balance”?
I studied with a physical therapist from Norway for three years. I was relentless with the pursuit of my knowledge. I taught seminars and at one point was teaching at least 30 weekends a year.
I think it’s safe to say I was probably a workaholic or at least a knowledgeaholic.
There weren’t many questions I didn’t know the answer to. As my wife sometimes says, “You know everything!” (and okay, I admit, that IS a nice thing to hear from your wife 🙂
All to prove that, gosh darn it, I’m smart enough, I’m good enough, and people like me.
And my “smarts” approach sort of worked. Two patents. Several inventions. Appointment as an Associate Professor and Assistant Dean. Lots of patients over the years. Worked with NFL, MLB, NBA, Olympic athletes.
And being “smart” was an effective shield against being known.
I may have been respected, some, but people were generally intimidated not only by what I knew but by how I delivered the information.
I was so uncomfortable around people and so concerned that they believe me, that if they asked a question about something I had already taught, I would often say something like, “That’s simple. We already covered that.”
I meant that you, as the student, could learn this. I meant that you were capable. Didn’t come across that way at all.
Ouch.
I thought “smarts” was a big thing. But it wasn’t. Jesus was, arguably, depending on your point of view, one of the smartest people, if not the smartest, to have ever lived yet he spoke and dealt with people simply.
Simple words. Simple ideas. Simple stories. Tremendous tolerance and patience.
I eventually figured out that being the smartest guy in the room was not the way to go (and more than once, I was certainly not the smartest guy). But, it cost me. My health suffered. Personal and business relationships suffered.
I wanted connection with others yet my focus on knowledge disconnected me.
Of course, at the time, I didn’t understand this. The signals were there -subtle, easy to ignore.
Little snow.
Don’t get me wrong. I have plenty of “big things” that I battle frequently. But, at least now, I’m more aware. I can catch the signals earlier and prevent “little snow” from becoming “big snow”.
Most of the time.
Life Is…
Life is a collage of little things and big things. Choices. Attention. Intention.
I think happiness emerges when you figure out what’s really a big thing and what’s not.
Isn’t this always the case? Our amazing brains can learn Chinese, build space crafts and biotech wonders over the course of a few years, and yet the most fundamental, rudimentary lessons that gird up life take us a lifetime to learn.
So this is a story of flakes, apparently….NO, DK you are not one of them 🙂
It’s not the number of megahertz that counts. Or the amount of RAM or the speed of your hard drive. It’s how nice the screen looks, how the friendly the user interface is. It’s all about the input/output. That is if you care about your users.
What kind of computer would Jesus make?
Isn’t wisdom really all about learning to distinguish the big flakes from the little flakes? I love wise people. They help me a lot….Thanks DK!
Omar – I think you’re right about distinguishing “big flakes” from “little flakes”. But that requires one to really look at the snow 🙂
Thanks much for your feedback.
