SMALL ACTIONS LEAD TO BIGGER EFFECTS IN THE WORLD AROUND US, WE JUST NEED TO BE AWARE

Mark was a 37-year-old father of three. He said that he was happily married, although he and his wife did sometimes have arguments about sharing the workload, and particularly the care of the children. Mark told me that he did his best when it came to staying fit – before having children, he had been very into fitness, and despite limitations on his time now that he was a father, he still tried to get out for a run at least once a week, and was careful of his alcohol intake.

Mark worked for an insurance company and liked it well enough. He loved his children and his wife, but said that he desperately missed having the time to do the voluntary work he used to do. As family life had became increasingly busy, he could no longer fulfil the hours required at the homeless shelter, and he’d had to step back from his role. He had tried to donate money to charity as a way to give when he couldn’t give his time, but he felt that he had lost his feeling of really doing something good through volunteering. Life now just felt like the proverbial treadmill, and the future didn’t look like being any different for many years to come. He said he knew he shouldn’t complain; he recognised that he was lucky to have a job and a happy family, and he felt a bit greedy for wanting more – but he did want more. He described himself as not being depressed, just ‘a bit down and kind of bored’.

Contributing to society, and the associated feelings of being of worth in the world, was a key value for Mark, as it is for many of us. But he showed an inflexibility in his definition of contribution. In his volunteering capacity in a homeless shelter, the results of his efforts were immediately visible. He didn’t always get to speak with the people who attended the shelter – it depended on what job he was given to do. But he did always share in the sense of camaraderie and purpose available to him there.

Mark’s pain was a type of soul pain – a feeling of loss of values and context for his living. Without being

able to see the contribution he was making, his life felt a bit insipid. In conversation we talked about the ripple effects of the smallest of kind actions. We also explored the various ways in which he was contributing to society, such as by raising a family and being a good husband.

These types of roles can seem to be very slow-burning, with their fruits taking a long time to ripen, and it takes some discipline to keep the end goal in view. But it is by repeatedly and intentionally choosing to see what we do in a larger context that we polish our spiritual lens on the world. On reflection, Mark felt that he could do a better job in his various current roles, so we began to map out ways he might do this over the coming weeks. In the following session Mark reported that he had begun to ‘wake up’ more at home, to chat to the children more, and generally pay more attention to what was going on.

Instead of simply explaining something in his son’s homework, he had taken the time to find a video online that explained it better than he could.

At work, Mark stood up for someone who was being talked over, asked one more question about someone else’s opinion before giving his own opinion where he could in a conversation, and consciously smiled more.

He also noted that the family dog was from a rescue home and that this was another way in which he was contributing to a greater good. Mark also attempted to measure, as we had discussed, the duration of the effects of a kindness done to him on his own mood and behaviour – for instance, when someone let him into a line of traffic, he found he was more likely to do the same for another person later. In this and subsequent conversations, Mark began to see the contributions his actions were already making to the world around him, and that these effects could be positive or negative depending on the choices he made.