Big Thinking or Small Actions?

I recently came across an old story about a traveler who comes across two stone cutters. He asks the first "What are you doing?" and receives the reply "Squaring the stone." He then walks over to the second stone cutter and asks :What are you doing?" and receives the reply, "I am building a cathedral." Both men are performing the same tasks, but one of them is aware that he has the choice to be part of a greater dream (from Alberto Villoldo's book, The Four Insights).

Social entrepreneurs and those who support them are often asking the question of whether it's enough to save the world one social entrepreneur at a time or if we need to be thinking bigger. My answer is: both. It is up to everyone one of us to learn how to simultaneously be focused on our daily tasks - whether it's the emails we're responding to, reports we're writing, conversations we're having or thoughts we're conceiving - AND begin to understand how those daily tasks affect a bigger dream. In this work and in any world changing work, there are often a contingency of dreamers and a contingency of doers. I believe that while most of us are stronger in one area or the other, we cannot exclusively be one OR the other. We must learn how to be both, how to do our daily tasks and figure out what more we need to do to affect greater change.