What's Your Glorious Purpose?

Sharing another email from artist Jason Kotecki discussing how we all have meaning. We all have a purpose in life...

Ready for a fun fact about COVID-19 (you know, the virus you’ve been inundated with information – and misinformation – about for an entire year now that’s wreaked havoc on a global scale)?

It has been recently calculated that all of the virus circulating in the world right now could easily fit inside a single Coca-Cola can.

Yep, British mathematician Kit Yates figured out there are around two quintillion – that’s two billion billion – of the virus particles in the world at any one time. Even calculating the fact that the spherical shape and spiky proteins would leave gaps when stacked together, they’d still fit easily into a single soda can.

“It’s astonishing to think that all the trouble, the disruption, the hardship, and the loss of life that has resulted over the last year could constitute just a few mouthfuls,” Yates said in a statement.

Astonishing indeed.

But it goes both ways. Just as one very small thing can unleash an enormous amount of devastation, so too can something small lead to an astonishing amount of good.

One of Fred Rogers’ earliest jobs was as a puppeteer for a local children’s show in Pittsburgh.

The Simpsons started out as a bumper sticker on the Tracey Ullman Show.

Michael Dell sold his first computers out of his college dorm room.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver started the Special Olympics in her backyard.

The Missionaries of Charity, which now consist of over 4,500 sisters active in 133 countries, started with one humble woman helping one poor person.

It’s astonishing to think of all the opportunity, progress, and positive impact and changed lives that can come out of very small actions.

People who are burdened with glorious purpose, the ones intent on changing the world, started small. They often look a little foolish at first. But purpose mixed with tiny actions is very powerful. All the big, world-changing things had humble beginnings.

John S. Pemberton was a pharmacist and a colonel in the Confederate army during the Civil War. He was trying to find a safe substitute for morphine when he invented Coca-Cola. 

Let the naysayers laugh and the doubts roll off your back.

You are not too small to make a dent in the universe.