re: #16 jamesfirecat

Oskar Schindler saved 1,200 people, and he got a movie made about him.

Chiune Sugihara saved almost six times that many, and his neighbors didn’t know what he had done until Jews from all over the world showed up at his funeral to pay his respects…

I just can’t imagine having that kind of humility… to do something so great and yet to be so nonchalant about it…

The interesting thing about Schindler is that he wasn’t a born saint. He was a man of several failings, faithless in marriage and prone to bad business judgment. Most of us aren’t outstanding at anything, and we never make much of a splash. Not that there’s anything shameful in that; most of the flow of a river is not in the spray, not in the rapids, maybe not even in the channel but as seepage in the mud alongside. Our name is legion.

But the flip side of that is, if fate puts you in a position to do something big, know that you don’t have to be big to do it. You can be mortal. You can be flawed up one side and down the other. S’OK. Just do it.