Making a Difference

One thing I've come to realize about myself over the years - and be powerfully reminded of recently - is that I want and desire to make a difference.

I want to feel like I am improving something in something that matters.  I want to leave at the end of the day saying I made a difference in something that was meaningful in someone's life.

For those that know what I do, the thought may already be there that this is the case.  I have worked around people's health and health conditions for 14 years.  I have contributed to effort to see that things are helped on their way to the people that need them.

But I've come to realize that it is not enough just to work around it.  You need to do something meaningful in it.

At the heart of my job, I'm a paper pusher and persuader.  I actually have little power to do what I need to have happen, so I have to use my ability to cajole and convince to see things accomplished.  But most of those things are really just short term - getting one thing done one time, only to see it swallowed up by the next immediate task. 

I've a vivid memory from when I got laid off of the ultimate permanence and importance of everything I do at work - it's the memory of making files for everything, of boxing things up only to see them being sent somewhere else where they would either be used for something by a successor someday or just disposed of.  It's that memory that haunts me every time I pick up a task to do - ultimately, this is all being put in a box somewhere.

Which is why working on something which is making a difference truly matters.  Sure, these are trivial matters - but all things of importance have trivial matters which must be completed.  It's what those trivial matters are being performed in service of that matters.  I can push paperwork to sell a plastic part, or I can push paperwork to help create a drug that fights cancer.  The paperwork - conceptually, anyway - is the same.

It's what it is being put in service of that makes all the difference in the world.