Be the best of whatever you are

As I wrote in a previous post, I was “fired” and the manager expected me to come back to work when they get ready to proceed to the next step. Last week, I was asked to come back, and signed a new contract. I’m living in the business world.

Now I have been back to the work. Is this good news? Well, it’s hard to tell. Some of the workers here are demotivated for a reason that I don’t want to describe here. When I saw them, I thought of my favorite quote shown in the profile page. Here is a full text.

And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Don’t just set out to do a good job. Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn’t do it any better.

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. If you can’t be a pine at the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley. Be be the best little shrub on the side of the hill.

Be a bush if you can’t be a tree. If you can’t be a highway, just be a trail. If you can’t be a sun, be a star. For it isn’t by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are.

Now I tell this to myself.

The current contract will end at the end of May, so now I keep looking for a new job. I may end up taking an undesirable job again.  But whatever I do, be the best of whatever I am.

April 30, 2013Permalink