We Cannot Do Great Things On This Earth

We cannot do great things on this Earth, only small things with great love

Mother Teresa

Seeking greatness

When I was small I wanted to be famous.  Maybe a great singer or an actress.  So everyone would love me.  My search for love and validation was evident even then.  As I matured and realised service was one of my innate needs to feel useful, I speculated about being of great service to the world.  I didn’t realise it then but my needs had not changed much from that little girl who just wanted to be loved.

As we get older, we usually grow in our need for meaning in our lives. Or rather the interpretation of what is meaningful changes.  Mother Theresa had it right when in this famous quote she contended, we cannot do great things on this earth, only small things with great love.    That is because of our interpretation of greatness.   There is a  part of us that thinks achieving something with a big impact is more meaningful than something small.   But as the wise Mother Teresa knew, that’s simply not the case at all.

There are no hierarchies in love

Quantum science has shown we are all connected.  Once you realise this, then it becomes clear that achieving great things is all about carrying out acts of love.  When I was younger I had a phobia about spiders, as do many of us I know.  If there was a spider in the house or near me, I would probably shriek until someone killed it.  When I matured and realised we are all connected, it just didn’t seem tenable to go around killing anything deliberately.  So one of the great things I have achieved is to put aside my phobia about spiders.  When I encounter one, I can stay calm enough to gently remove it and put it outside.

Martin Luther King a leader I greatly admire for some of the great things he achieved in taking forward the Civil Rights movement.  To do what he did, he had to take himself also out of his comfort zone and make his best attempts to raise the consciousness of the world to the inequality which was all around us.  An act of great love.  Love is love, whether you are saving the lives of spiders, or seeking to end suffering for many people.

Small things with great love count

What has become clear to me, is you don’t have to be famous to be great.  You don’t have to carry out acts of love which impact humankind.   What makes you great is your ability to extend love, no matter if that is to a spider or a whole race.  Achieving either is worthy of recognition of your greatness