There’s a fine line between believing that nothing matters and believing that everything matters.
I was thinking about that on my drive to work this morning. It was 55 degrees, one of those first mornings when you realize fall has either arrived or is certainly on its way. I left a little before daybreak, and as I drove, the sun started peeking through the trees on the passenger side of the truck. It’s supposed to be in the mid to upper 70s today. Starting a day in the 50s and ending it in the 70s is about as good as it gets.
When I leave this early, there aren’t many people I want to call before 7:00 in the morning. You never quite know what is happening in someone else’s world. This week especially, with school starting for so many families, mornings are busy. So instead, I tend to think.
This morning I found myself thinking about balance, a subject I’ve probably written about dozens of times. There are mornings when I want to wake up and tell myself, “Nothing matters.” It doesn’t matter how much gets accomplished today. It doesn’t matter how many calls I make, how many emails I answer, or whether every item gets crossed off the list. Life will go on.
Then there is the voice on the other side saying, “Everything matters.” We need to get this done. We need to call this person. We forgot about that. Someone is waiting for an answer. There’s another meeting, another decision, another opportunity, another responsibility.
One side can lead to indifference. The other can lead to anxiety. Somewhere between them, I think, is where we are supposed to live.
Maybe those two forces are like waves crashing into a breakwall. One is constantly moving, the other seemingly immovable. Neither one wins today. But give them enough time and they begin to shape each other.
That reminded me of something I saw recently. It was a video of what was described as a Japanese practice involving people repeatedly pushing and pulling a metal bar across a stone. Several people would participate, working the bar back and forth, again and again. At first glance, almost nothing happens. Ten minutes later, the rock is still a rock and the bar is still a bar.
But continue the process long enough and a groove begins to form. Continue for years, or generations, and what once appeared immovable has been permanently changed. Not through one extraordinary effort, but through thousands of ordinary ones.
Water does the same thing. Stand beside a waterfall and look at the stone underneath it. Water seems soft and temporary. Rock seems hard and permanent. Yet water keeps moving, drop after drop, day after day, year after year. Eventually, the stone changes.
The water finds its path, the rock shapes the water, and the water shapes the rock. Neither completely surrenders to the other. Instead, over time, they create something neither could have created alone.
Maybe that is closer to the balance I’ve been looking for.
It isn’t that nothing matters, and it certainly isn’t that everything deserves the same urgency. It is recognizing what matters enough to keep showing up for it.
Relationships work that way. Businesses work that way. Families work that way. Lives work that way.
The important decision with that metal bar isn't whether you can cut through the rock today. The important decision is whether you are willing to move the bar today, and whether you have the discipline to come back and move it again tomorrow.
Sometimes the rock we choose is bigger than our lifetime. Maybe we never get to see the bar break all the way through. But perhaps someone else picks it up and keeps going. That matters, too.
There is another image that fits here: bamboo. Most of us have heard some version of the story about bamboo spending years establishing itself below the surface before its visible growth takes off. Whether or not nature follows the story as neatly as the metaphor suggests, the lesson is a good one.
Not all progress is visible.
Sometimes the work is happening underground. Roots are spreading. Strength is developing. A foundation is being built. And then suddenly there is growth everywhere.
In fact, with bamboo, the eventual problem can become containing that growth. Once established, it can spread so aggressively that the challenge is no longer getting it to grow, but deciding where you want it to go.
I like that idea for our lives, our businesses, and our relationships. Do the quiet work. Put down the roots. Keep moving the bar. Let the water run. And perhaps someday one of our biggest challenges will be figuring out how to direct all the growth, opportunity, enthusiasm, and possibility that came from years when it seemed like not much was happening at all.
As I get closer to work this morning, I’m thinking about the next few months. There are a lot of cool things happening, personally and professionally. There are responsibilities and challenges, but there is also a tremendous amount to be thankful for.
Maybe perspective comes from realizing that we don't have to choose between nothing matters and everything matters.
Some things matter deeply. But they don't all have to happen today.
The relationships matter. The work matters. The conversations matter. The people matter. The direction matters. Our job is simply to keep shaping them, not frantically and not indifferently, but patiently, intentionally, and consistently.
Like water over stone.
And maybe, on a cool fall morning when the sun is coming through the trees, we can stand back long enough to appreciate that while we are busy shaping our lives, our lives are quietly shaping us too.