Pebbles and Paucity
How much matter does something need before it matters?
I once met a small malachite pebble, in the museum gift shop on a school trip. We became inseparable. I rolled it in my palm, over and over; cool and dense, its green vibrancy energising me. It was my anti-kryptonite. It was very, very important to me.
Until I lost it, and persuaded myself it didn’t matter.
Matter, Wikipedia tells me, is anything that has mass and takes up space. A poppy seed. A pagoda. A pebble cool in the palm. Things that can be weighed, made, lost.
Matter, the dictionary tells me, is a subject under consideration. A serious matter. A private matter. The matter in hand.
And, curiously, matter can be used to diminish — it was over in a matter of minutes.
But it is as a verb that it swaggers: to matter is to be important, to have meaning.
This last matter is the one that matters most to me; the one most often in my fingertips. It drips from my tongue with a surprising assuredness, these are lyrics from my songs:
The gloss stripped away
Reveals misjudgments we made
Things we thought mattered
Don’t mean anything.
— Happy Ever After
Somethings matter
Most things don’t
Skip the chatter.
— I’m Too Old to Die Young
And there it is in my Substack tagline: “For people who want to be clear-eyed on what matters.”
I flinch at the bombast. Am I implying that if you hang around with me, I will guide you over the craggy contours of human complexity, to a nirvana of clarity? That I will show you what matters?
This is a misrepresentation, an antiphrasis. If you hang around with me, I will share my hapless cat-and-mouse caperings — the sudden pounce towards one mattering and simultaneous darting evasion of another, the dizzying paralysis of a mind besieging itself.
Matter is my Moriarty.
But I am no Sherlock.
The greatest privilege of being a doctor is that, no matter what, every day matters. The pebble-smooth purity of this truth was an oasis in the early years of my medical career. Sometimes, I wish I could have remained there forever, drinking from those holy waters.
But the desert was all around, parched, needy.
Helping the person in front of you has an ancient simplicity: extending your hand, seeing it taken. But my mind would not stop nibbling at me: what if we could channel it? Touch hundreds, maybe thousands of hands. Science can do that. Change can do that.
So I began journeying again. Wonderful, painful, inspiring, tiring, useless, useful, life-altering journeys. Tossing pebbles into new seas, watching the ripples go further, faster. The topographies and the vocabularies retained a consistency, but the quest changed. I no longer look for what matters — that list is infinite. I search for where to park my meagre attention, my limitless intention.
And I search for the how.
Two months into this Substack and I am struggling. I have written two essays. The first took me many hours over many months; the second fewer, but still many. Too many to address all the issues that matter.
My time and my talents seem to be in a cruel trade-off. My limitless intention demands a craft and rigour that my meagre attention cannot serve. I rabbit-hole for hours. I walk around, wander around, for hours. I can’t leave it alone, then ghost it with no explanation. I think I know it, and then find it has shape-shifted, or maybe I have. I move, remove, replace, return. Over and over, until I’m exhausted or satisfied, or both.
None of this feels excessive while I am doing it. It feels like care.
If something matters, surely it deserves time? If it is to carry my name, surely it should be as good as I can make it? If I am asking someone to give me their attention, surely I should have given it mine?
These seem like sound principles. They may even be sound principles. But my mind nibbles at me. Have I confused volume and value? Maybe it’s not about capacity and capability. Maybe it’s about vanity and self-indulgence. Maybe it’s just habit.
One of the dictionary examples won’t leave me alone: “A graceful style was not enough to hide a paucity of matter.”
A paucity of matter.
This is the fear. That a short piece, a simple thought, may be too thin. That an idea without enough substance has not earned the right to occupy space.
And yet much of what I believe matters most is weightless: asking a thoughtful question and listening to the answer. Sitting beside someone. Walking. Noticing.
Simple does not mean easy. Short does not mean slight. Quickly done does not have to mean quickly forgotten.
I have spent years trying to champion things we undervalue because they are ordinary, unglamorous, a bit different, a little harder. Maintenance. Care. Attention. Restraint. The small acts that hold us together, that the world is built upon. It would be awkward if my own writing practice cannot honour this.
So, I am starting Small Matters. An experiment in writing with intention and attention. Quickly.
The parameters for a Small Matter are simple: they should take no more than eight hours, including concept, drafting, honing, editing, and publishing.
This piece is the first Small Matter.
It has mass. It takes up space. It can be read in mere minutes. It has the feel of a pebble, shaped to my palm, soothing and energising. I’ll try not to lose it.
My first essay took many months to write too, there's this annoying yearn for perfection that we all have that can sometimes hold us back. Really loved the poetic nature and the use of language in this read. Looking forward to the next one.
So many layers here! From the pebble, to the etymology, to the meta-interrogation of writing, and back to the pebble—it felt like a well-executed digression and return. There's substance (matter) and range, while still being cohesive, which I think is really the goal of an essay (an unexpected breadth of material that unexpectedly works together). From what you mentioned before, you seemed a little cautious of going down rabbit holes, but if this is an example of that, I'd encourage you to keep it up! Your voice drives the progression forward, and you can always edit out the less harmonious tangents. Excited for Small Matter 2.