The miraculous power of micro magic
“That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”
When I was a child, I was obsessed with drawing parabolic curves.
The idea that I could draw straight line after straight line only to end up with an elegant curve as a finished product never ceased to amuse and astonish me. What else could be created with ingredients seemingly at odds with the intended final outcome?
In many ways, this is how we create our lives.
Every life story, no matter how extravagant, is ultimately made up of the smallest mundane moments. Every hero’s journey, no matter how profound, is created by the unexceptional act of placing one run-of-the-mill foot in front of the other.
One simple insight plus another plus another. One unremarkable action plus one more plus one more.
Eventually, a curve emerges - so overarching and large, we can forget the fact that nothing out of the ordinary was necessary to bring it to life. It was simply a series of simple steps that ultimately created what once felt impossible.
When we learn to love the smallest steps, a world of possibility emerges.
And yet most often, people will eschew the small and become intoxicatingly enthralled with all that is big and bombastic.
Play a big game. Take the big leap. Be the biggest and the best version of yourself.
This is what we’re often told is the key to creating what we want in our lives.
But the more I look, the more I find that the most spectacular feats in this lifetime are not built through massively magical ways of being, but through the persistent repetition of the most minuscule building blocks of their existence.
Focusing on the small may occur to you as unnecessarily tedious. And perhaps it is. But for those of you who love control the way that most humans do, I will point out that the tiniest steps contain the most potential for quality control.
The same way that the quality of a chair is determined by the quality of its wood, and the quality of the wood is determined by the quality of each grain, and the quality of each grain is determined by the quality of each tree cell, the quality of your life will not be built through large gestures, all-inclusive fixes, or one-time solutions.
Just as with a chair, the quality of your largest desires are determined by the quality of the micro. Each action, each word, each thought, and each moment gradually but decidedly creates the whole.
And what happens when we step in a direction we don’t want to go?
This is the beauty of many small steps. Just like I learned when drawing parabolas as a child, the more small lines I was willing to patiently draw, the less influence perfection held over the end result.
Conversely, when we treat change as a destination, not as a journey, we create a pressurized environment where every motion carries the weight of a billion steps.
This can be terrifying. And even if we inevitably take the shot and hit the bullseye, the fear of needing to hit it again and again can become cripplingly overwhelming.
There is a grace in growth through small steps. It affords a type of weight distribution that eases the risk of cracks emerging. And in that ease, we can find ourselves simply sliding into the future we imagined yesterday.
A final fun fact about parabolas, because math is fun.
Perhaps you’ve heard about zero-gravity flights. These are flights that simulate weightlessness and were first developed as a way to train astronauts.
How, might you ask, can we simulate weightlessness on an planet beholden to gravity?
Well, parabolas of course!
The simple mathematical magic behind these flights is that they fly up and down along a parabolic curve. As a result, there are periods of time along that path where the humans inside feel what it’s like to be weightless.
Cool, right? And yet, not so surprising.
Sure, taking small steps from here to there may create a beautifully fluid curvature on paper and in our lives. But it’s also worth noting that embracing tiny pieces isn’t simply a conceptual exercise.
As it turns out, when we embrace the simplest, smallest steps, we access a magic so great that we have no choice but to fly.