‘I Shall Not Live in Vain’: Emily Dickinson Reveals the Power of Small Deeds

“If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.”

—Emily Dickinson

The poem above is very short, like so much of Emily Dickinson’s poetry; but also like so much of her poetry there is a great depth of meaning. What Dickinson is recognizing is what Jesus Christ himself noted in the Gospels (e.g. Matt. 10, Matt. 25), the importance of small things.

A word, a smile, a few minutes of time—we never know how much the little things we do affect everybody around us. I know of a man whose conversion to Christianity was begun when a person he met in an airport handed him a holy card. I remember being told of a man who committed suicide and was found afterwards to have written in his diary that he would not commit suicide if a single person smiled at him that day. It is very often true that a statement or question can have totally opposite meanings based simply on the tone of the speaker’s voice. St. Therese of the Child Jesus called her path to holiness the “Little Way,” because it consisted in doing small things, and yet she became one of the greatest saints of her era. Never underestimate the power of your every word and look and deed. There is a wonder and a joy in knowing that a single smile or a few moments of time can impact other people so much for the better, but it also brings a great responsibility.