A friend once told me that, when he would visit his mother’s home, he found her preoccupied many times a day with searching her pool and screened porch for tiny trapped frogs. When she found one, she would catch it in a net and release it into the yard.
For her, the house was the extent of her sphere of influence. This assumption limited how she considered the possibility of her life and thus bound how she chose to spend her attention and energy.
Certainly, to engage the world productively, we have to judge what is actually in our control, and then make prudential decisions about how to engage the world. None of us is infinite.
Too often, though, we encounter too little, and spend time stressing out over frogs.
Far better to encounter actual suffering and address it actively and compassionately.
Paul's Blog 