Magnifying a message

For ages a particular item has been sitting on the chest of drawers in my bedroom. Even though it is in plain sight, I do not notice it – just as I do not realise or think about the fact that I am breathing, even though I am.

Recently, however, I noticed the item, picked it up and opened it for the first time in years. It is a small, somewhat circular leather case (about 1.5 inches in diameter) containing a three-piece circular magnifying glass that I had received as an eleventh birthday gift. Each of the magnifying glasses can be swung separately from the sturdy black plastic receptacle, giving options of having an object magnified once, twice or three times its size.

My name is inscribed on the surface of the receptacle, along with the date.

Even though four decades have passed since then, I can recall being excited about that gift. Whether it had been something I specifically requested or something that my parents decided to give me (perhaps because I was a child who was interested in insects, leaves and things in the garden), the fact is, I still have it after all this time.

It strikes me today how special it must have been to me – that of all the things I threw away, gave away or burned (ie old letters, cards, etc) before moving to Tobago, this was not one of the discards. It is also interesting that I have it with me in Tobago when it could have easily been one of the items I left behind in a box at my parents’ house.

In those childhood days I used the magnifying glass in the garden to examine insects (eg dead butterflies and beetles which I collected) and plants (eg the finer designs on leaves) more closely. I also enjoyed creating small fires (experimentation, not pyromania) by focusing the pinpoint of sunlight through the glass onto dry leaves and, sometimes, paper – focused sufficiently long to attempt burning brown letters onto the white surface but not long enough to create holes.

Today, however, not currently equipped with natural 20/20 vision, I used the magnifying glass to read some very small writing on the back of a box.

I showed the magnifying glass to a friend who commented (as I had to myself) on how much it must mean to me, considering that I still have it after all this time.

When I told her how, as a child, I would be out in the garden using it, she commented: “That is how children should be – curious to discover things for themselves, rather than Googling everything.”

The reality is, whether child or adult, we all (once we have access to wifi and a device) Google things now.

So said, so done; I just Googled the word "magnify". For most of us, the word is first associated with visual enlargement – making clearer, bringing closer, strengthening the small in visual presence.

According to Google: “The original sense of magnify was 'to praise highly, to glorify, to extol,' specifically, 'to praise or render honour to God'." While the modern sense of magnify is connected to appearances, the older sense was, in fact, to "make greater in size, status, importance, to enlarge, increase, augment, or advance."

The root of the word magnify is the Latin
magnus meaning great. In line with this, we can acknowledge that we all have a "calling" in life, which we can choose to either magnify greatly or diminish.

No help is needed to see clearly that across today’s societal spectrum, many people are more focused on magnifying themselves, their selfish needs, hunger for material gain and quest for power at all costs.

As a society we magnify other human beings too easily by giving them power (sometimes at the expense of our own) and placing them in "high office" – when they generally may not have the dignity and decorum to live up to that call.

This quote by Prophet Joseph Smith suggests something that we (from pauper to prosperous person, politician to President) could each do well to exemplify: “...to magnify a calling is to hold it up in dignity and importance, that the light of heaven may shine through one’s performance to the gaze of other men.”