Allegedly Deep Thought # 2--If You Had a Chance to Get a Message Across to a Large Group of People, What Would it Be?

My message would be to appreciate the small things. I do not mean stop and smell the roses or pet a puppy. I mean that one should appreciate how everything can change in a flash, completely altering a life. One should be mindful of that.

Here is a good illustration. Te retina is an incredibly tiny thing, yet if it tears off, it will take your eyesight with it. Every plan you have ever made can go bye bye along with it in an instant. When the opthamologist told me the surgery was a failure and I would never be any better than a legally blind cyclops, my life was completely altered. For him, though, I was one of twelve or fifteen patients he was going to see on some random Tuesday. She was trying to stick me in before he went out to grab some Chinese food. She was thinking about shrimp fried rice while I was wondering what else I had to live for in the half-darkness.

Your action may not always or een often merit a blip on your innteral radar, but they can have a big impact on someone else. Your just another day at the office, distracted by a grumbling tummy news may destroy someone else’s life.

I would have paid this idea lip service years ago when I was in law school. I would have said that as a Christian, I would most certainly pay the utmost attention to my clients’ needs. Most anyone who needs a lawyer is hiring one to help with the largest issues of their life outside health decisions and mot us ea lawyer in that, too. But I know I would not have meat it without the empathy I now have for being on the receiving end.

It is impossible to maintain that high emotion for every client, I know. But the experience would still make me a better lawyer now than it would have before. It is not going to happen now. I did not appreciate how something as tiny as a retina can force big changes.

I do appreciate the irony of the catalyst for the end of my legal career teaching me about being callous with clients far too late for the lesson to do me any good. That is, in some ways appreciating a small thing, too.