Each Small Task

Every once in a while, I start to feel that touch of insignificance, that feeling inside that says "you are so small that you are nothing, and all that you do matters not one bit."  It's kind of a sad feeling, one that somehow undermines what I do as a person.  After all, I work very hard at what I do, and I try to help other people whenever I can--how can I be completely insignificant?  How can the work that I do mean nothing?

The answer is quite simple:  the work that I do does mean something.  I don't do the work on a city-wide or state-wide or nation-wide or world-wide level; no, I do my work on the individual level, with the students who happen to be in my school at any given time, with my step-children and wife, with my church, in the classes that I take.  My work isn't noticed by the newspapers, and you won't see it on the evening news.  You won't hear people talking about it at the water cooler, and you won't be reading about it in next month's Reader's Digest.  My work is like almost everyone else's work, and it's quite beautiful just as it is.

My work involves helping my students resolve schedule conflicts and school-related problems, and in the process teaching them how to deal effectively with conflicts and problems on their own.  My work involves encouraging them, validating them as human beings, showing them caring and love, and even setting them straight when they're out of line every once in a while.  It involves congratulating them when they've done well and helping them out when they've done poorly so that next time, they can do well.

My work involves encouraging my three step-children, buying them school clothes and paying for college, helping them with school when they need help, explaining some of the realities of life to them (when they'll listen, of course!), being there when they need someone to be there, making sure that they have a roof over their heads and enough food to eat.  My work is listening when they have jokes or problems or stories and telling them my jokes or problems or stories.  My work doesn't involve judging them, but letting them grow into the people they are meant to be.

My work is keeping the yard clean, replacing the old, worn-out windows, mowing the lawn, planting flowers, fixing the garbage disposal, cleaning the garage.  It is trying to live my faith, maintaining websites, praying, reading and learning so that I may continue growing as a person, paying attention to the lessons that life gives me.

I never will find a cure for cancer or Muscular Dystrophy.  I will not star in a film or throw the touchdown pass that wins the Super Bowl.  I will not appear on the cover of Time or Newsweek, and I won't be able to build a beautiful new housing project to help out lower-income people.  That's not where my life has been leading, and that's fine with me.  I'm helping life out by doing just what I'm doing, in my own small way, day after day.  What I do does make a difference, and even the smallest difference can grow into a large difference before I know it.

So when those moments of insignificant feelings come along, I remind myself that I am significant, and that there are people who benefit from the contributions that I make to life.  I'm not touching stadiums full of people at a time, but I'm touching deeply, and unless I keep that in mind and respect that fact, my touch will be weak and almost even useless.  I want the touch of each small task in my life to be as profound as it possibly can be, and the only way I can be sure of it is to be sure that I respect each small task for exactly what it is:  part of my life's calling, part of the contribution that I make to the harmony of the universe.

And I know that you contribute just as much, if not more, to the harmony of the universe, and I thank you for all that you give to this world--all that you have given, and all that you shall give!

According to a class full of ten-year-olds in a Sunday school class, these are the problems with grownups:

1.  Grownups make promises, then they forget all about them, or else they say it wasn't really a promise, just a maybe.

2.  Grownups don't do the things they're always telling the children to do--like pick up their things, or be neat, or always tell the truth.

3.  Grownups won't let their children dress the way they want to--but they never ask a child's opinion about how they should dress.  If they're going out to a party, grownups wear just exactly what they want to wear--even if it looks terrible, even if it isn't warm enough.

4.  Grownups never really listen to what children have to say.  They always decide ahead of time what they're going to answer.

5.  Grownups make mistakes but they won't admit them.  They always pretend that they weren't mistakes at all--or that somebody else made them.

6.  Grownups interrupt children all the time and think nothing of it.  If a child interrupts a grownup, he gets a scolding or something worse.

7.  Grownups never understand how much children want a certain thing--a certain color or shape or size.  If it's something they don't admire--even if the children have spent their own money for it--they always say, "I can't imagine what you want with that old thing!"

8.  Sometimes grownups punish children unfairly.  It isn't right if you've done something just a little wrong and grownups take away something that means an awful lot to you.  Other times you can do something really bad and they say they're going to punish you, but they don't.  You never know, and you ought to know.

9.  Grownups talk about money too much, and bills, and things like that, so that it scares you.  They say money isn't very important, but the way they talk about it, it sounds like the most important thing in the world.

10.  Grownups gossip a lot--but if children do the very same thing and say the same words about the same people they're being disrespectful.

11.  Grownups pry into children's secrets.  They always think it's going to be something bad.  They never think it might be a nice surprise.

12.  Grownups are always talking about what they did and what they knew when they were ten years old--but they never try to think what it's like to be ten years old right now.

Does this sound familiar to you?  If it does, it might interest you to know that these complaints were made in 1953--half a century ago.  Just what have we learned about being adults and treating children over the last five decades, if we continue to perpetuate some of the treatments that were unfair so long ago?