Small

Gun’s Quote-of-the-Week:

“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.”

-Helen Keller

A lot of people say that God has big plans for you. Some employer tells you that you are going to work your way up to the top. Your parents tell you that you are going to have a beautiful family. There are a lot of big promises in the world and much is made of how big our legacies could be.

It’s as if you’re a failure if you don’t reach the seemingly boundless potential that all of your friends and neighbors make up for you. Perhaps, to an extent, there is truth in that. However, I have also discovered that life gives second chances, even if you screw something up along the way.

Allow me to offer you a different theory. Allow me to offer you that big plans are actually smaller than big pictures.

Nobody will get credit for simply doing their job. Think about the teacher who spends a lifetime educating literally thousands of people. Think about the construction worker who builds hundreds of homes for families to live. There’s the mom and the dad who rear their children, teaching them and loving them, so that they, too, have an opportunity to do the same to their children. The pastor who consoles a grieving family, the doctor who provides a healing touch, the business man who keeps dozens employed.

No, these are not the same people as professional athletes, actors and big-shot CEOs. Their faces aren’t on TV very often and they rarely, if ever, get mention in a newspaper or magazine. Yet, these are the people we love, who love us and who contribute to their society without much fanfare. To be flagrantly cliché, they make the world go ‘round.

That all being said, just take a look at ourselves. We are infatuated with fame, fortune, celebrity status, professional athletes, top political figures and business executives. Seriously, why is Donald Trump a household name?

I’m all for reaching your potential, setting high goals and challenging yourself to reach further day after day, but not if that means you can never be happy with who you are now.

I had a coach in high school that preached to us about “the little things.” These are the things that you wouldn’t think would matter on football field but would end up being the difference between victory and defeat. The little things like the stance you would take on the field, keeping your head up when you tackle and following through with a full arm motion when throwing the ball. These little things were tweaks that could be the difference between making a block, making the tackle and hitting your receiver, respectively.

The little things in life are just as important now. Before you can win the game, you must first make the play. There are a bunch of little plays in the game, and each one matters when the clock reads 0:00.

Be OK with being small. You’re little contributions are bigger than you think.

…and that’s why it’s a Gun’s Quote!