The whisper effect (Burj Kahlifa version)

We celebrate big bang creations, though everything of value including the processes that brought us into being came about through almost inaudible whispers of incremental creation. 

The tallest building in the world right now is in Dubai. (The Burj Khalifa.)

The tallest building in the world . . .

. . . began with thatched huts, improved with adobe dwellings, improved again with bricks then steel and wires and glass and plastics and whisper after whisper after whisper of innovation.

Each of those (very few) items (of too many to note) mentioned above had their own history of whisper improvements along the way. 

Today’s steel whispered its way into a modern marvel beginning with the Bronze Age — before that! — in the Copper Age, when humans began smelting metals into tools. 

Those first metals from 7,000-ish years ago are a distant cry from what holds your vehicle together today.

Which is good for you.

It is good to remind yourself that it is the accumulation of small whisper acts that will compel a big bang creation into existence.

It is also good to remind yourself that every creation is conceived and constructed from thousands of whisper moments. 

Your time today on something of significance to you? But a whisper. You’d hardly miss it if you blew away your whisper time on something else of no value to you. 

(TV? Clicking away idling on some inconsequential thread?)

Yet . . . take away those whisper moments, those moments of accrual, and you get nothing. 

Everything of significance is constructed whisper by whisper by whisper. Each whisper feels almost meaningless. It’s like laying down a feather. 

Or a grain of sand.

How many grains of sand do you suppose are in the Burj Khalifa? In the glass, in the structure? The particles embedded in that edifice are almost imponderable.

And yet it’s all whisper effect. Enough whisper moments and you can create your own Burj Khalifa. Though you might call it something else. 

You might call it a meditation practice.

Or a freelance career.

Or a meaningful relationship.

Or the side project that ultimately changed your life.

Part of the What creators do series.