Text of the meditation
To neglect small tasks, or to carry them out in a perfunctory manner, is a mark of weakness and folly. The great person knows the vast value that inheres in moments, words, greetings, meals, apparel, correspondence, rest, work, detached efforts, fleeting obligations, in the thousand and one little things that press upon them for attention; briefly, in the common details of life.
They see everything as divinely apportioned, needing only the application of dispassionate thought and action on their part to render life blessed and perfect. They neglect nothing, do not hurry, seek to escape nothing but error and folly; they attend to every duty as it is presented to them, and do not postpone and regret.
By giving themselves unreservedly to their nearest duty, they attain that combined childlike simplicity and unconscious power which is greatness. There is no way to strength and wisdom except by acting strongly and wisely in the present moment.
James Allen (1864–1912), Book of Meditations for Every Day in the Year (1913) – public-domain text, gently modernised.
The original 1913 text is in the public domain.
