Do you know your impact?
This week, I lost a very close friend of many years. As people step in to share in the mourning and love, I am understanding more of what it means to live with impact.
Shining A Light
My friend was always determined to help others, share what he had, and to love you, even when you didn’t think you needed (or deserved) it. His care was not through grand gestures. He would simply show up, be there, and see deeper than the surface. He taught all of us who knew him what it means to be a family, what it means to accept folks as they are, what it means to share, and the how it looks to be direct and honest.
With each small gesture, he managed to build a community of people who didn’t know they would need each other until he brought them together.
Seeing The Small
This week, I had a client who worried that she has missed her purpose in life because she didn’t follow her choices, but instead chose a career and life that her parents thought was ‘best’ for her. However, in the reading, Spirit made it clear to her that she was missing what her impact has been – that every day, in simple, little ways, she made a positive difference for others. Spirit told her to ‘look with new eyes’ at her past, and see where she actually fulfilled a purpose beyond what she understood or believed.
How many of us can relate to the woman above?
We can often believe or feel that we don’t (or can’t) make a difference. That what we do disappears into the noise of daily living, never to be seen or understood.
What we miss is seeing the small. The simple gestures of a smile at someone at a moment when they are frustrated. The patience when something goes slightly awry with a clerk trying their best. The hug when someone is feeling lost. All the daily things we do from our heart, from our soul, matter.
Know Your Impact
Do not fall into the trap of believing that you aren’t making a difference. Being you; laughing, sharing what you do, see, and feel; thinking about loved ones and friends (and maybe calling or texting) – each of these small things lifts someone. Grand gestures are wonderful, but really, greatness is simply in each day, in each thing you do with intention and care.
The small, added together over a lifetime, leads to a life deeply filled with purpose – and a life filled with amazing love.
And so, as I told those who asked me in the last week what they can do, I offer the same for you: “just keep love in your heart and share a laugh”.
In loving memory of Robert (Gabbie) Samon, Jr.
