Good people are everywhere, in all eras and generations. I ran across this quote from Wavy Gravy, the man who stood on the stage of the original Woodstock concert and announced, “What we have in mind is breakfast in bed for 400,000!” (Love that.) Gravy says:
“The art of life is putting your little bit of good where it will do the most.”
I like it, because it doesn’t over-dramatize. All of us have at least a “little bit of good,” and Wavy leads by example. Link to his bio above to be blown away.
This may seem unrelated to Wavy’s quote, but it linked up for me….
Last night I was listening to Marketplace on the way home from work and heard Kai Ryssdal (my radio boyfriend) interview the author of Rapt, Winifred Gallagher. She said that multi-tasking is a myth, and suggested that we work in 90 minute blocks of focused time. (I love focus time.) Ms. Gallagher also said that:
humans can only process 173 billion bits of information in our lifetimes, so we have to spend our cognitive currency carefully.
(I have no idea how much this amounts to, and wonder what it looks like when we’ve hit the limit; dimentia?)
In other words, be thrifty with what you spend your brain power on, because you’ve only got so much.
Taken together, Mr. Gravy’s and Ms. Gallagher’s advice comforts me. Not only can we not do it all; we can’t even process it all. So ease up on yourself: you can’t save the world all by yourself - just focus on a couple things you can do well, and add it to others’ who are likewise committed.
Now, go on and have a Friday.
