In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Tereza, as the Prague Spring happens and the Soviets begin a military occupation, takes the time to rescue a crow that was hurt on the side of the road. Yet when dissidents come and ask Tomas, her husband, to sign a political petition, he refuses. Which prompts a rather interesting sentence in the book
“It is much more important to dig a half-buried crow out of the ground than to send petitions to a president.”
A lot of people would reflexively disagree with that. Certainly the actions of most people do—even though there is the saying that “all politics are local,” we tend to think big picture before we think little picture. Seneca was the same way. Look at how he expressed his priorities in the essay, On Leisure:
“The duty of a man is to be useful to his fellow men; if possible, to be useful to many of them; failing this, to be useful to a few; failing this, to be useful to his neighbors, and, failing them, to himself: for when he helps others, he advances the general interests of mankind.
It’s ironic, Seneca’s impact on trying to help as many of his fellow men as possible was what drove him into politics and eventually to Nero’s court, where he probably hurt more than he helped. It was only after that failure that he retreated back to his writing and to small town life. But what if he’d switched the order? What if he’d focused on the suffering crow instead of petitioning the emperor? Might the world have been a better place?
These are unanswerable questions, but they raise a provocative point that goes to the core of Stoic thought: We should get our own house in order first, before we try to tackle other people’s problems. We should deal with what’s in front of us, with how we can help those in our neighborhood and our town, before we try to change the world.
Because if tragedy ever befalls your family—cancer, unemployment, a debilitating accident, an untimely death—the world will not be there to take your kids to school so you can make the doctor’s appointment. The world is not who will leave the casseroles on your doorstep or start the GoFundMe page. It will be your neighbors, your town. And you should do the same.
Doing those small things won’t change the whole world, but they will change somebody’s world, and that’s all that matters.
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