Moral Ambition and Other Quiet Miracles

The clothes are drying on the line, swaying like prayer flags on this cooler Monday in mid-June. The heat broke overnight, and with it, the mania of children slowly exhaled. I swear high temperatures short-circuit their circuitry, like tiny, benevolent drunks on a sugar bender. But tonight, they softened. The wind blew. The sky held its breath. And this morning I woke before them to the sound of coffee beans grinding in the kitchen and my husband setting out bowls for breakfast, as reverent as a monk at matins. A life of service, right there in the hum of the grinder and the clink of spoons.

I stayed quiet for a moment longer, listening. Three small bodies still curled in dreams. A mother on the edge of the bed, suspended in the hush. This too, I think, is service. Not glamorous. Not sharable. Just the slow, faithful tending to the souls you’ve been given to love.

I’ve been thinking lately about moral ambition, not the loud kind that campaigns or keynotes, but the quieter sort. The kind that doesn’t seek a standing ovation, just wants to leave the room a little more bearable. I think about it when I run, which I did this morning, long and hard. I think there might be a small miracle stitched into my sneakers, based on how alive I feel by the end. The tomatoes are reaching. The clouds are blowing past like they’re late for something. And I come home steadied. Ready to give again.

Because giving is the job. Not in a martyrdom-is-a-virtue way. But in a you-have-something-the-world-needs kind of way. Your strength. Your steadiness. Your weird knack for listening or fixing things or making people laugh when they want to cry. It matters, especially now, when the world feels like it’s running Windows 95 in the middle of a lightning storm. Every act of neighborliness is political. Every wave across the street, every casserole on a doorstep, every extra moment spent really seeing someone is a little rebellion against despair.

This is the version of ambition I believe in. A moral ambition that lives in the way you treat the barista. The way you parent through exhaustion without collapsing into bitterness. The way you wake up and do it again, not because anyone’s watching, but because the stakes are so high they start at your own kitchen table.

In our yard, the green has gone full-throttle. The twins are crawling through it, tumbling into garden beds, stealing sips from the hose, climbing onto plastic stools not designed for climbing. They press their wet faces against the window and shout “MAMA!” like I’m both punchline and prophet. They play peekaboo for what feels like four and a half hours, exploding into shrieks at the reveal like they’ve discovered the meaning of life.

And maybe they have. There’s something holy in the way they laugh. How one always has a built-in friend who understands the world exactly as weirdly as they do. It’s like living with two pint-sized mystics in mismatched socks.

Their older brother, meanwhile, proudly scrubs the toilet in rubber gloves like it’s his calling. He asks to do it. He’s four. I watch him and think, this is what it looks like to take pride in your small corner of the world.

And isn’t that the whole thing?

To bring what you have. To offer what’s yours. Not with a neon sign or a perfect caption, but with a faithfulness that outlasts the frenzy.

There are days I want to run away to a silent monastery with nothing but soup and books and one pencil. But mostly, I want to stay. To stay awake to the lives unfolding in my hands. To stay attuned to the ache of the world without letting it crush my joy. To stay, even when it’s loud. Even when it’s absurd. Because that is the work. That is the offering.

You don’t have to be exceptional. You just have to be faithful.

You don’t have to love every minute. You just have to show up for the ones that matter.

You don’t have to rescue the world. You just have to brighten your patch of it.

And when your hands are tired, and your heart is full, and your children are dreaming beside you in the hush of a Monday night, may you know that your life is part of a great and quiet lineage. That tending can be enough. That joy is a kind of resistance. That love, offered daily in its plainest clothes, is a thread that stitches the world back together.

May they remember that.

May you remember it, too.