Stick a Needle in my Eye

“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.” – Edmund Burke

Stick a Needle in my Eye

“It looks as if I’ve arrived with perfect timing!”  Phil said as a greeting, when he walked through the restaurant door.

He’d been with his aged mother at an appointment with her doctor for most of the afternoon and had just dropped her at home before coming.  It was now evening and he needed a little food and rest because of his busy day.

“My mother has lost most of the sight in one of her eyes now.”  He said with a concerned look on his face.  “I was with her, in her doctor’s office, so she could get an injection in her eyeball.  We’re hoping it will stimulate improved vision in that eye.”

It’s hard to imagine what it would be like to lose vision in one or both eyes for most people.  And, it sends a shutter down one’s spine to think about having a needle stuck into one of their eyes.  And, Phil’s story brought to mind that one childhood rhyme, about sticking a needle in an eye. You know the one!  Many of us have used it as a way of offering increased assurance to another.

“Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.”

At this thought, that rhyme seemed to become a virtual haloed-ticker-tape, rotating round and around Phil Grimm’s head as he recounted his afternoon of offered reassurance to his mother.  It wasn’t the same kind of assurance as the now haloing-rhyme though.  His is a more simple, practical, loving and effort-based assurance.  

While speaking of the importance of effort, Edmund Burke once offered this assurance, “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.”

And here was Phil, sitting at the table, still wearing his virtual halo, and down-playing the difference his small effort was making.

“It’s no big deal!” He said. “All I did was drive her there and then sit with her a while.  It was a lot more effort for her than it was for me.”

It would be a mistake, I thought, for him to do nothing because he viewed it as, so little.  What is a little thing to one, is often a big thing for another.

“It looks as if I’m finishing my dinner with perfect timing!”  Phil said as he pushed his plate away with a satisfied look on his face.

He was now getting ready to go to his aged mother’s home again, so he could help her get ready for bed. It was now late evening and she needed a little more reassurance, so she could rest.

“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.”  I thought to myself, while saying goodnight to the man who thought he was doing very little.  Something small.

Because, he could do a little, something small, it was a lot to She who received it!  Rest assured.