“The purpose of life is not to be happy – but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you have lived at all.”
~Leo Rosten
I didn’t know what I would write about today and then I checked my email inbox and noticed a new (long awaited) blog post from my best friend Ms. L, Blessed to be a Blessing, and suddenly it got me thinking about the marks that people leave on this world. In our conversation the other night in which we pondered the actions of a man that I saw on the show “Secret Millionaire” who literally took the shoes off his own feet and gave them to an elderly man on skid row in L.A. who desperately needed them. We wondered and questioned ourselves as to whether we would actually be so selfless. As much as we would like to think that we are and that we would do something that generous and that kind hearted without so much as a second thought, we could not say with absolute certainty that we would. Given the fact that both of us have discussed many endeavors that we want to delve into in order for us to be in the position to help someone in such a grand way it was pretty shocking for both of us to have come to that reality.
The mark we leave behind in this world should not be notebooks and pads of paper filled with the good intentions that we had planned on doing when we got to the point where we could do them. Ms. L says it best in her post today when she talks about how even the small things that you can see fit to do is still a big thing because it’s the best that we are doing with what we have right now. Frankly, someone giving $10.00 is just as valuable as the person giving $10,000 if the person giving the $10.00 is giving what might be their last little bit they have to give. The value should not be placed in the dollar amount that a person gives but rather in the manner in which they give it and how open their heart is when they are giving it.
Sometimes we are so focused on the fact that we are not able to give all of what we would like to give to help those less fortunate that we end up not giving anything because we think it’s not enough. Every little bit counts and lord knows when I have been down on my luck I never cared whether someone was able to help me with a little or a lot because I looked at as something is better than nothing. Maybe we should think about the marks that we leave behind as just that. Not the grand gestures that we would love for them to be but the very best of ourselves that we have in us to give. Come the day that we are all judged I don’t think that God will be looking at one person who gave just $10.00 as not giving enough if he knew that was all that they had to give. You have to start somewhere or else the mark you leave behind will be no mark at all.
“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.”
~Edmund Burke
Jimmetta Carpenter
Writer/Editor
The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)
Writing as “Jaycee Durant”
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