The Small Work in the Great Work
The Small Work in the Great Work
My wifi was shite! I was annoyed and messaged Sorina Campean at the Oxford Said Business School. As part of the Oxford network of mentors she had invited me to a virtual leadership seminar — “Leading Others through Chaos: Self, Others, Society” run by the Aspen Institute. I told her there was a high probability I would not be able to make it. Thanks to the “God of All Things”, including wi-fi, my husband (note: he works in insurance), I managed to join last minute. Little did I know that I was zooming into my best video call of 2020!
Guided by 4 readings and an image, 11 of us in a zoom room had three hours to reflect on 2020 and how it had changed our lives (if at all!).
Question #1: Had the pandemic changed how we thought about ourselves, our lives and those around us — had we in the past been slaves to our daily routines, leading rushed and material lives and had that changed in any way over the last few months? I, for one once COVID hit, had been forced to ditch the gym and go for a run in the local park every morning. Until then, I hadn’t known a single neighbor (well maybe one), running from pillar to post between work and home, child and dog. Now I have met not just my neighbors but also know the names of all their dogs. I reached out to people that I felt might be lonely — an elderly woman who I saw in the park everyday and sat with her while she spun stories about her life as a little girl growing up during the war, still living in the same flat as an 85 year old that she was born in. She might have been lonely but perhaps, I needed the conversation more than her. I tried to help one elderly gentleman, Richard and his wife with his groceries and in return his wife rang my doorbell with a surprise bouquet of flowers as a thank you gesture (note: I had nothing for them yet). Richard said he didn’t need any help; he had taken upon himself to help all those older than him with their shopping needs. One morning, I saw Richard picking up garbage that had been strewn all over our street as a result of animals crawling into garbage bags that had been left overnight by those on our street. Richard wanted our street to look pristine, even during the lock down. Was knowing my neighbors and offering to help enough when someone 2x my age was doing 2x as much?
Question #2. Have people ever asked you at dinner parties about what you do? Do you often reply with a title? What is it that we do and why do we hold so much importance to titles? What is it that I do and is it what I love doing? I have reflected a lot about this during COVID. In my heart, I want to drive more capital into the female founder ecosystem and in my head, I need to figure out a more scalable way to do this. This year my title was “Angel- Atomico Program 2020” and I was lucky enough (thanks to Sophia Bendz) to bridge that 14 inch gap between the head and the heart. I have relentlessly mulled over what next — what will 2021 bring for me and how will I continue to drive my mission forward? I don’t have an answer yet but I realized post Friday’s session, that no matter what my title will be in 2021, I will continue to do what I love. The answer is not in the title (no pun intended) — it is in “the Small work in the Great work”.
Brings me to my favorite text from Friday’s readings (I love it so you must read it, quoted below (1), read it slowly and read again & again, as many times as you need to) — “Matthew Fox writes somewhere of the “the Small work in the Great Work, the place of your little life and love, your little daily days and little earnest effort as a solitary person within the larger life and larger love that some call Holy, some call God, some call History, and some call simply larger than themselves. Like everybody else, just like everybody else, we are doing “Small work within the Great Work” of creation, and thus do we aid it and abet it in unfolding. We stand where we will stand, on little plots of ground, where we are maybe called to stand (though who knows what that means?) — in pulpits, in classrooms, in field of lettuces and apricots in our black preacher clothes, in hospitals, in prisons (on both sides, at various times, of the gates), in streets, in agencies, in offices at 25 — and it is sacred ground if we would honor it, if we would bring to it a blessing of sacrifice and risk. It’s sacred ground, just as the floor of any gym in South Dakota might suddenly be sanctified by one child, one young woman’s dancing and her song (ancient, holy), the interior clarity of her spirit, that spoke there to the hate-filled world, and transformed that place with faith and deep remembering.
Question #3. What is you plot of land? What do you stand for? Having worked as a broccoli girl in the university kitchen to a teaching assistant to the university professor, I have always believed that labor is never in vain. Friday re-affirmed the point that no work is too small. If we all continue to do good, earnest “small work” in our plots of land, honor this privilege by giving it our very best, overall, it can make a big difference to the world. Both question 2. and question 3. proven by our neighbor Richard whose title was neither “caretaker” nor “sanitation worker” but he still continued to do his small work, picked up the garbage on our street, his plot of land, so that it could look immaculate for the whole community; not just himself.
Question #4. 2020 has been a transformational year in so many ways! First COVID followed by the #blacklivesmatter campaign. The campaign highlighted so many of our biases with race, class, gender, ethnicity and the microaggressions people live with on a day to day basis. What are the biases that exist within our own selves and how do they manifest themselves? I, for one who fights every single day for gender equality had no real answer during the lockdown, when my very talented 14 year old, a classical ballet dancer said to me that it was unlikely she would ever get a role in a ballet performance in London because she was brown; everybody who makes it looks similar she said. She went on to then prejudging her own abilities in a dance form she has been religiously practicing every single day since the age of 2. What can we as individuals do to fight the structural injustices that exist and make meaningful change to systems, hierarchies, tradition, customs, beliefs and the justice system? “How do I make difference ordinary for my daughter? How do I make difference normal? How do I teach her not attach value to difference? And the reason for this is not to fair or to be nice but merely to be human and practical. Because difference is the reality of the world. By teaching her about difference, I am equipping her to survive in a diverse world.” (2) I want her to use her difference to her advantage. I want her to dance through life with this difference rather than be bogged down by its weight. COVID for one highlighted that while no one is immune, it is the black and ethnic minorities that are most impacted and a vast majority of key workers, doctors, nurses and are likely to be more represented in jobs that expose them to the virus. They have gone about doing their “small work” every single day, in their plots of land, our hospitals, giving back to us, protecting us so we could live a little easier, breathe a little easier.
Question #5. The very last question — the one we were asked to reflect on at the very end of the session. And I will leave you with it. Has 2020 given us a blank canvas to reinvent our lives? Our work, our titles, our plots of land? Will we go back to what we were before the pandemic or will we take this time to rebuild, to reinvent and redo? What is our classroom? What is our pulpit? What is our “Small work in the Great work?
(1) Victoria Safford, The Small Work in the Great Work
(2) Annotated from A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions
