You are Significantly More Significant than You Know!

“There is nothing insignificant in the world.

It all depends on your point of view.”

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 

Once can never know when decisions we make or actions we take, whether big or small, can make tremendous impacts upon the lives of strangers. By performing to the very best of your ability every day, and focusing on doing good for other people, one person can create a chain of events that may change the world.

Consider the story of the Scottish farmer, a man named Mr. Fleming. One day he was out tending to his fields when he heard someone shouting for help. Without hesitating, he immediately stopped what he was doing and ran to the aid of whoever it was that was in distress.

A young boy had gotten himself stuck in a bog, slowly sinking into the spongy quicksand. The farmer pulled the young man free of the mud, saving his life. The boy gratefully thanked him, and was on his way.

A few days had passed, when a lavish horse drawn carriage arrived at the farmers home. A very wealthy man wanted to thank Mr. Fleming for saving the life of his son, and felt compelled to repay him. The farmer, however, refused payment, saying “no payment is necessary, I would have done this for any man or woman.” The farmer’s son then came outside of their aged and time-worn house, and the wealthy man immediately knew how to repay the farmer. He explained, “if you will not take any reward for saving my son’s life, allow me to educate your son at the finest schools as though he were my own”. The farmer thought it over, and agreed to his generous offer, knowing he could never be able to provide is son with such an opportunity.

The boys were taught and cultivated at the best educational facilities of the day, and the farmers son eventually became a doctor. The wealthy family still faced difficult times, however. Soon after graduating, the boy who nearly lost his life to a muddy bog contracted polio. Fortunately, Alexander Fleming, the son of the Scottish farmer, had invented a treatment for polio – you probably know it as penicillin. The now twice-saved wealthy boy was Winston Churchill, one of the greatest leaders the modern world has ever seen.

In hindsight, it is easy to connect the dots from early interactions, and follow the chain of events for many things, but at first, small actions can seem insignificant and have no discernible connection to other people. The most important action taken in this story was not the saving of the boy from the bog, but that of the farmer’s graciousness, in not taking a reward for saving the young man’s life. The world events which occurred so many years later, under the leadership of Winston Churchill, would never have taken place, had one man not acted so selflessly and reached out to take the hand of a boy in distress.

Have faith in humanity, and know that altruistic choices and actions are seeds that you plant, seeds which will over time sprout and grow in ways you cannot imagine, and will sometimes never even know about.

Do good! Be good! You are significantly more significant than you know!