While driving home late one evening, we were listening to the radio, and singer Mark Lowry quoted someone saying that, “The first half of our lives are dedicated to being successful and the second half is dedicated to being significant.” Oprah calls this an “aha moment”. I thought about this the rest of the drive home and have continued to ponder this statement ever since. The question I kept asking myself was, “What was success anyway?”
I guess many would define success as having wealth, power, position, and fame. Others might add family, happiness, and health to that list. Is success, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder and a totally subjective opinion? My answer would be an unequivocal and emphatic “YES”! Beyond that, my definition of success is about being significant. What would the world be like if we were as dedicated to being significant as we were to being successful? What would our families be like if we created moments in our occasions instead of momentous occasions that we could brag about as we “keep up with the Joneses.” Who are these Jones people anyway, and why do they have the power to keep everyone striving to be something or to live up to some predetermined ideal? I just want to shout from the middle of Times Square, “Where are all of you going, and why are you killing yourselves to get there? . . . RELAX!”
I heard June Carter Cash once say that all she was trying to do was matter. Yes, another “aha moment”! Can we just take time to stop and think and matter? Can we get off the hamster wheel, chasing the pellet, long enough to be significant in our lives and the lives of those around us? Can we do the hardest thing of all and truly “let go and let God” so that we could actually “lay aside the weights that so easily beset us” (Heb. 12:1) (and I’m preachin’ to myself here!)
My son, Austin (whom I shall save for an entire blog of his own!) bought me a calendar of quotes for moms that I loved and read daily. I love quotes, quote books, and all things quotes! This particular quote said, “My mother wasn’t just interesting – she was interested”. “Aha” again! I realized that wanting to matter, being significant and being interested had one common denominator - they take the focus from ourselves and place it on others. If we can take our eyes off of ME, MYSELF, and I long enough, we can actually see others...we can notice. If we really notice then the chain reaction begins: we can be our brothers’ keeper, we can matter and we can be significant.
My favorite Mother Teresa quote is “there are no great things, just small things done with great love.” I think we can all agree that her life was one that epitomizes what significance truly means. Her success cannot be equated with material gain but certainly by a wealth of riches of another kind ... the best kind. The kind of great love that Jesus talked about throughout the gospels and the kind that He lived and that He was... all the way to the cross. Because you and I ... we mattered.
