A hidden life.

In the 90s, I worked near a large office building and went to the same sandwich shop as those in the large building despite working in an office which formed part of a corner store.

While in the suburbs the large corporate building held within it a very corporate culture that contrasted the more village feel of the suburb.?

One day this manager came down from the building and mocked the lady that made the sandwiches saying the reason she made some mistake with his order was because she wasn’t very smart as she made sandwiches for a living.?

This guy may have been a corporate manager but he was not a leader.?

It was more a reflection on him.?

Did he know the opportunities she had??

More importantly maybe she sacrificed for greater things, maybe she enjoys her work, maybe it offers flexibility etc, maybe it pays the bills.

It is funny how bean counters and some professionals can measure the cost of something but not the value, the greater part.

When you look at the sea you get a sense of your own littleness.

I love the ocean. I forget myself in a way and are overcome with something infinitely greater in nature.

In a way that is what wisdom is to forget oneself and remember the greater part.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Or in the words of Pope Francis about St Therese “In place of a Pelagian notion of holiness, individualistic and elitist, more ascetic than mystical, that primarily emphasizes human effort, Therese always stresses the primacy of God’s work, his gift of grace”

When a mother cares for her baby she doesn’t count the sleepless nights her eyes are fixed on her precious child and their relationship.

Do you believe in different weights to things?

St. John of the Cross “the smallest act of pure love is of greater value in the eyes of God, and more profitable to the Church, than the greatest works.”

Say in a relationship often what matters more than the gift is what is the heart of the giver.

The person who gives it.

A phone call from someone we hold dear can mean more than a magnanimous act.

How do you measure? Saint Therese of Lisieux refers to a “hierarchy of truths”

Love has its own weight.

I met this lady who worked at David Jones when I was looking for some outfits for my mum who had Alzheimers and she said her mum too had Alzheimer’s and she gave up a career in finance to work at David Jones in a flexible fashion so she could care for her.

My Dad devoted a great part of the later part of his life to being the primary carer of my mum who had Alzheimers for well over a decade. He did it out of love and he loved her. He showed a level of devotion to her that was inspiring.

In the last years of my Dad’s life I would go over and try and raise his spirits and calm him if he was worried. He would call me many times a day, worried and confused. I felt quite depleted emotionally. Only my wife and kids knew, one day I had to do something urgent and I tried to go to a camera store with my son and my Dad was calling worried and afraid. That was my hidden life.

There is a difference between external credibility and truth, reputation and character.?

“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”

John Wooden

Often a person who seeks to build credibility say as speaker or writer for instance will try to achieve certain outward signs of credibility, say they become a professor at an Ivy League uni. This type of external credibility takes years to build.?

Charles Handy, a man with great external credibility as a thinker decided one day he would drop the letters and titles and just go by his name Charles Handy.?

There is a beautiful story about one of the greatest violinists playing in a subway near where people just the night before had a small fortune to hear him. As he played in the subway people just walked past not recognising the beauty.

How often do we miss truth, goodness and beauty because it is not wrapped up in the “right package”. How often do we dismiss character and the greater virtues such as love because they don’t have certain outward signs of credibility.?

And how often does humble virtue walk, heroism behind the ordinary.?

One of the greatest saints, St Faustina worked in as a kitchen hand, and in her spare time wrote and changed the world.?

There are people right near you that lead heroic lives hidden behind the ordinary.

There is heroism and greatness hidden behind the ordinary because it is love that gives value to action.

“Bad times, hard times- this is what people keep saying: but let us live well and times shall be good. We are the times. Such as we are, such are the times.” St. Francis de Sales

“You know well enough that Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, nor even at their difficulty, but at the love with which we do them.”

St. Therese of Lisieux

Blessed are they, because life is light if they are free of external burdens and a person has the best reward of all, truth and goodness.?

That is, to lift people up rather than pull them down.