Living Large

In Aimee Bender's poem “The Doctor and the Rabbi”, a story is told of an atheist doctor who asks a rabbi to tell him about God. Upon reflection the rabbi said that at the end of life we will each need to apologize to God for the ways we have not lived. “Not for the usual sins,” she said. “For the sin of living small.”

We need reminders like this. We need words that shimmer and enliven and wake us up. A simple story can plant the seed of an idea that takes root and grows within to change us, and one idea at a time, we can transform the world.

Muriel Rukeyser said that “the universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” I think about this... a lot.  I think about the all-too-common "sin of living small”. I think about the responsibility each of us has to live larger and write the most fantastic stories that we can in the time we are allotted here.

Am I living large enough? Am I wasting the gift? Do I hold back a story that can launch a thousand dreams and change the world?