"You can be anything you set your mind to."
"The world is your oyster."
"God created you to be a world changer."
When did these things stop feeling like a mantra of joy, and more like a heavy burden to bear. I think for most of us it happens when we start our first job after college. For some of us, we dive right into work we've always dreamed of, or move into the next steps towards our degrees.
For a lot of us, though, we just do the next thing that gets us paid. We work at Starbucks, the closest job to our homes that's hiring; we work a summer at camp. We have no clue what to do next, so we just do something. And we wonder if what I'm doing is significant. And still when we finally get the holy grail: our first full-time job that's doing something we're interested in, we wonder: is this all there is?
It seems like everywhere we look there's someone who's traveling and having all these grand adventures. We see our friends doing "amazing" missionary work, going on trips every few months, and being there own boss. We look at our 40 hours a week office job and wonder why we settled for ordinary. But did you?
Here's the secret: every last one of us is living an ordinary life.
Did I just blow your mind?
Think about it, even Justin Beiber with all the glamour his life entails still does the same things every human does: he eats, he sleeps, he uses the bathroom. Your friend on that amazing mission trip is doing things you could be doing right at home: spending time with people, serving, cooking, praying.
What makes us think that some people are living so extraordinarily and the rest of us not? Perspective.
Sometimes we need to see our lives with fresh eyes. Sometimes people go on mission trips to serve, yes, but also I think more often to get a fresh perspective on how God is moving in the world. It's so easy to get complacent in our own lives. It's so easy to think that our lives don't matter.
I just started a job as a full-time tutor at a charter school, and one of the most important things I gained from training is that the littlest most ordinary actions can have major impact. A successful lesson vs. a poor one can be as simple as checking in with your students. An encouraging smile and a genuine affection for your students can work wonders.
I really wanted to encourage those of us who work 40 hours a week, go to church, spend time with loved ones, and feel like week after week their life is on repeat, don't forget your life is significant!
I don't know what your impact will be in this life, but I'm here to tell you, you do make an impact. You don't know what your smile and attention might mean to someone ordering a coffee from you that day. You don't know how far your encouragement will push a student to succeed. You don't know how keeping a safe, clean environment for kids to hang out will keep them safe from so many dangers in the world. You don't know how your great customer service brightened up someones whole day.
We just don't know--so cheers to the ordinary, for doing the jobs that we're in right now. It may not be your dream job, but don't forget we always need people willing to drive our buses, make our coffees, clean our spaces, and do the work of life. So let's do all things with excellence because while it might feel ordinary, our actions can have extraordinary impact. Just think about all the people who by simply showing up to work help your day to run smoother (I'm looking at you MBTA). I am reminded to keep on doing my ordinary actions with compassion and love because I don't know the impact I am making. Perhaps my ordinary life is making a huge difference in someone else's life.