The Multitude of Moments

The direction of a big act will warp history, but probably all acts do the same in their degree, down to a stone stepped over in the path or a breath caught at sight of a pretty girl or a fingernail nicked in the garden soil. (John Steinbeck)

Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom. (Song of Solomon 2:15)

The Electoral College is a strange mechanism of the US government by which the president is selected every four years. You would think this process would be a simple election, but in the US, people don't vote for the president.  They vote for "electors"-- people who will in turn vote for the president.  This is rarely a significant detail, but here is where it can get interesting: Each state has a number of "electors" equal to the number of it's representatives in congress plus the number of it's senators.  Now the number of representatives for each state is determined by population.  But there are always 2 senators.  This means that the number of electors is roughly based on population, but skewed toward smaller states.  As a practical example, a vote for president in Wyoming is worth 3 times more than a similar vote in California.  So while we American's stay up till all ours of the morning waiting for the results of certain "swing states" like Ohio or Florida, the real election is being decided in small communities all over Wyoming, Vermont, North Dakota, Alaska...  This is how George W. Bush won the 2000 election while receiving less votes than Al Gore.  His small victories were worth more than Gore's big ones.

My point is this.  Many of us think that we are defined by a few momentous decisions in our lives.  I think, in reality, we are defined by the multitude of moments in between.