I think we are both smaller and more powerful than we let ourselves imagine.

I want to say, we are so powerful that our lives, our choices, our friends, lovers, careers, and communities are expressions of our inner longing for completion. Even the problems, even the stuck relationships, even the hurts. Sometimes I forget how powerful I am and feel like a victim to the people and problems in my life. I get overwhelmed and bitter, I think about all the ways I feel depleted and incomplete. Then I stop and think, what if I made my life in exactly this way to help me become the person I want to be? What does this relationship problem have to say about the ways I hold myself back? What is the deeper message of my job dissatisfaction? What is really missing here, and where can I find it if not in myself?

I want to say, we are so small that our lives are singular blades of grass in a large field, subject to larger relationships and events, cycles and tides of history. Natural disasters, wars, abuse, exploitation, systemic discrimination, violence — these things may occur to us or those around us. They are not personal. Vast swaths of suffering and destruction do not occur because one person was bad, or we as a society were not judgmental enough of a minority population. Groups of people are not oppressed because of some innate inferiority or worthiness to be oppressed. Sometimes I get so caught up in guilt that I become paralyzed, or so caught up in my suffering, wants, and needs that I fail to do even the most simple thing that could help others find solace, strength, or joy. I become impoverished by my sense that I am alone, cut-off from the greater whole of things occurring. Some moments I am lucky enough to see the immensity of stars, land, or ocean, and I become aware of how enormous and vast this world really is, and how even this world is a speck of dust in contrast to the multiverse, and somehow this awareness of scale fills me with awe, a feeling that I am part of something larger than me.

I do not know how to reconcile these two views with a rational formula. Both feel true, both feel oppositional, and both expand each other. We are neither greater than nor less than, we are necessary to the world.