There are times when I don't know what to do.
Something happens in the world that hurts to witness, and the distance between caring and being able to help feels enormous.
I've been thinking about this all summer. First as floods in Alberta and fires in British Columbia impacted the lives of my friends and neighbors. And lately, as I've watched what is happening in Nepal.
There are things I can learn about, things I can support. There are people and organizations doing work that I can choose to stand behind.
And then there is everything else.
So sometimes I fold.
Not because I think folding paper will change the course of events. A thousand paper cranes won't stop a conflict. A folded flower can't undo suffering. A prayer is not a transaction in which we perform the right ritual and receive the outcome we want.
I don't believe that.
But I have learned not to dismiss small gestures simply because they are small.
When I am overwhelmed, my hands sometimes find a way to recalibrate before my mind does. I can fold a crane. I can fold a heart. I can make a little flower and tuck it into my commonplace book.
Yesterday, I made a pink strawflower garland and chanted a mantra for people whose circumstances I cannot change.
It didn't make the situation different.
It made my relationship to my helplessness different.
There is something about repeating a simple action that gathers the scattered pieces of attention. One fold. Then another. Thread through a flower, and another, and another. One breath, one small repetitive action at a time.
The feeling doesn't go away, but at least it has somewhere to go. Sometimes that is enough to help me find my footing again.
I think this may be part of why origami has become such a meaningful practice for me. We tend to talk about making things as though the finished object is the important part. But sometimes the thing we make is almost beside the point.
The value is in sitting down. In putting our hands to something. In allowing our attention to become smaller when the world feels unbearably large. In making one deliberate thing when so much is beyond our control.
And perhaps, once we have done that, we are a little more ready to ask the difficult question:
What is the ground beneath my feet? What actually is mine to do?
Maybe it is to donate.
Maybe it is to speak.
Maybe it is to learn.
Maybe it is to accompany someone who is hurting.
Maybe it is simply to bear witness without turning away.
And maybe sometimes, for a little while, it is to fold.
I don't know whether these small gestures change anything beyond the small circle of our own hands, but I know what happens to me when I sit down and fold.
My breathing changes.
My attention gathers.
My hands have something purposeful to do.
And something that felt like it was breaking my heart becomes something I can hold, one fold, one breath, or one mantra at a time.
Maybe that is not nothing.
