Cultivating and refining virtues in ourselves, that we may better demonstrate and impart them to others, is at once the wisest form of compassion and the most enlightened self-interest. Most of the impact we have on this world is born of the innumerable and superficially inconsequential gestures, reactions, utterances and work that we perform in our daily lives.

 There is a tendency in ethical discourse, as in the bias of media, to report and focus on the dramatic and the abnormal. There is wisdom in filtering out the mundane and focusing on the extremes when considering policy of any sort, but we mustn’t forget where the greater part of our time and energy go, and how those tendencies and tiny transactions compound with time.

 Many—especially naïve, sheltered young adults—assume that to leave the world a better place one must either become some world-historic figure, or act in service to a fervid political movement or ideology. That this mentality is more likely to lead to ruin than progress, to delusion than sensibility, to violence than harmony, and to combat than collaboration is plain to any astute student of history. Most of the noble and far-sighted ethical actors from past epochs do not figure prominently in the dramatized distortion of historical narrative.

 Far from being central players in a gripping drama they resemble, instead, The Wizard sung of by Black Sabbath:

Evil power disappears

Demons worry when the wizard is near

He turns tears into joy

Everyone’s happy when the wizard walks by

Never talking

Just keeps walking

Spreading his magic