The Way of It

Clearing, by Martha Postlewaite

Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself
to this world
so worth of rescue.

When a scholar publishes a paper, it is a letter sent to unknown recipients. If the job has been well done, then with luck it may be found and read, perhaps years later, by people who may take it into their lives and let it change their understanding of the world.

Roger B. Myerson, in “Learning Game Theory from John Harsanyi,” August 31, 2000