We, in most of the cases, erroneously tend to view joy, happiness, love, or success in terms of bigger steps, gestures, and bigger achievements, hence forgetting that it is the seemingly small things that make a difference in life. Saying a small ‘hey’ to the loved one, giving a ‘thanks’ gesture for any favor you get from a person, or giving a soft compliment to a workmate after a good job well done are one of the seemingly small things that make a far greater difference in the recipients’ lives than we could ever imagine.
Small gestures, when done on a consistent basis, have a far bigger impact to our loved ones, or the people that surround us every day than the seemingly bigger ones which we can’t do with consistency. We should come to terms with the fact that small tasks of charity or habits accumulate and form a bigger impact when done consistently.
If my goal for the year is to cut weight, I will be deceiving myself and be setting myself up for failure if I set myself a target of sprinting ten kilometers a day, yet I have never run even 500 meters in my life. Instead, I ought to be realistic with myself, and say, well, let me begin with three laps a day and keep on increasing every passing day as I get used and get fitter for the more serious regimen. That is how champions are made. They begin with small steps, for they, like Mao Zedong, truly know that a journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step. Step by step the journey is over.
I say all this to let you know that the small things in life matter. We should never under estimate small beginnings, and neither should we ever take the small gestures of love we receive from the people in our lives for formality. Always resist from the temptation of thinking that life is all about great leaps. Refrain from the habit of undermining the small opportunities of growth that surround you daily in an illusion that you are waiting for the bigger one before you move on. Remember, small opportunities multiply when seized. And know that great opportunities may come to us once in a while, but small opportunities surround us every day. Leverage them, and your life will surely change for the better. Ignore them and even the Creator won’t feel sorry for you.
Wise men realize that life is all about moments, and they know to maximally optimize and leverage from both the great and small moments that God avails to them at any moment. In order to achieve the success that, to the many, has proven elusive, we ought to keep our spiritual and physical eyes open to the seemingly infinitesimal chances that many don’t even see. Opportunities have a habit of disguising themselves in the form of hard work and great discomfort. They tend to wear overalls of dirt, discomfort, and general unpleasantness; and unless your eyes and brain are trained enough to spot them, they can easily pass away from our sight within a brink of an eye to the cunning neighbor nearby.
How many times have you ever been in a situation where an opportunity, disguised in overalls of hard work and discomfort, confronted you face to face, and you chose, out of ignorance, to ignore it only to find out later in life that another person known to you embraced it with open arms, and it has made him successful? How do you explain that?
We should strive hard to avoid that road of regret by being open minded and cunning enough to know when and when not to act when such rare moments of opportunities avail to us. Life can surely be a sweet adventure when we learn to appreciate the small we have, as we wait or strive for more. Our marriages and work would be awesome experiences when we embrace the sweet habit of giving great value to what our mates or co-workers do, small or big.
Bruce Barton couldn’t have explained it better when he said: “Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things, I am tempted to think there are no little things.” The things that seem small to us have profound powerful consequences that can make our life a heaven or a hell on earth. It is the biggest of follies when we ignore them, and we only, and only set ourselves for the biggest regrets of our lives when we start viewing life with a small-things-don’t-matter-much attitude. Such mentality takes us nowhere. It is self-defeating. It sets precedence for failure, and it should never be embraced at any time in our lives if we are to, indeed, live meaningful and purposeful lives.
There you have it.
Written by Kasomba Musa
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