WORK…🔨💻

Written 01/07/2019 (Morning hours of the day)
– For context sake

I just met a street sweeper – a very kind elderly man – from Ivory Coast. He came into France a long time ago , precisely when Nigeria fought her civil war (according to history, between 1967-1970).

We chatted a while and laughed and smiled in between the ‘French-levelled’ conversation. As I walked away, I realised I could connect a dot. It reminded me…that little 5-7 minutes brought to my memory the reference that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made to a ‘street sweeper’, in his speech titled, ‘What is your life’s blueprint?’

To quote exactly, he said…

“If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.”
Martin Luther King, Jr., “What Is Your Life’s Blueprint?”

We’ve always being trained to get the big jobs, in the big companies. Or better still, to work our passion. Although, we were not really trained to have a heart for work. Yes, there is a difference (or a missing link) here from those training for me, and maybe another great mind reading this can also relate (or understand).

I’ll bring it home another way, I was trained to get great grades, and then take up the happening jobs in the big companies – this I did – in that order for at least 3 years (by God’s grace). After that, I trained myself (more like changed my path), from all the inspiration I could summon in order to work my passion (in a company still, no matter how small); so I could enjoy the talent and fun side of work.

But today, I realised that these scenerios have reduced work to something that is either ‘working well or nothing else’. So the condition stays, ‘if it falls on your lot’ – now, I’m not towing the excuse path – but other things being equal – it had fallen on that elderly man to be a street sweeper. And still he does it with all his heart!

If it falls on your lot for a season, to not have a passion work or a big company work, does that mean you will not work? In other words, does that mean you will work grudgingly, under-perform, and try to prove to everyone in that season (or on the job) that ‘you’re better’ than the work that has fallen into your lot?

Does that mean you will not work, Blessing? (insert your name if you were spoken to).