THE COMMON TASK
Editor’s Note:
I ran across the following article in the book “Leaves of Gold” which Ethel Kent loaned me a few weeks ago. Its author’s choice of words identifies it with a period of time with which most of us are not very familiar. But its message is applicable to every generation. The “common” and the “routine” often become tediously boring. But a change occurs when we possess the attitude described in the article. With it, the “common” and the “mundane” can become extraordinary experiences which we treasure for a lifetime. (eh)
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It is not the straining for great things that is most effective; it is the doing the little things, the common duties, a little better and better – the constant improving – that tells.
We often see young people who seem very ambitious to get on by leaps and bounds, and are impatient of what they call the drudgery of their situation, but who are doing this drudgery in a very ordinary, slipshod way. Yet it is only by doing the common things uncommonly well, doing them with pride and enthusiasm, and just as well, as neatly, as quickly, and as efficiently as possible, that you take the drudgery out of them. This is what counts in the final issue. How can you expect to do a great thing well when you half do the little things? These are the stepping-stones to the great things.
The best way to begin to do great things is to improve the doing of the little things just as much as possible, — to put the uncommon effort into the common task, to make it large by doing it in a great way. Many a man has dignified a very lowly and humble calling by bringing to it a master spirit. Many a great man has sat upon a cobbler’s bench, and has forged at an anvil in a blacksmith’s shop. It is the man that dignifies the calling. Nothing that is necessary to be done is small when a great soul does it.
Orison Swett Marden
(1850-1924)
(Hotel Owner and Writer)
“Whatever your hand finds to do, verily, do it with all your might…” (Eccl. 9:10)