One of the most frustrating things about life is that the people who are committed to making a difference are the ones who so often lose sight of their value. When you’re trying to change the world, it’s easy to forget about the next step.
Which is why, pardon my joyful immaturity, I have to talk about Disney’s Frozen. The second movie is one of my all-time favorites, probably because of Olaf, let’s be honest. It’s a feel-good movie and he’s a feel-good character with incredible charm.
But at the darkest point of the movie, Anna, thinking Elsa is dead, comes to the sorrowful end of herself. She sings a song called “The Next Right Thing.” Even when you don’t have any hope or know what to do, just do the next right thing. That’s the message, and it is profound.
That same message comes to us seventy years earlier through Elizabeth Eliot, the wife of missionary-martyr Jim Eliot, killed by the very tribe he went to evangelize.
Elizabeth wrote,
“Working or suffering, be thy demeanor;
In His dear presence, the rest of His calm,
The light of His countenance be thy psalm,
Strong in His faithfulness, praise and sing.
Then, as He beckons thee, do the next thing.”
When things are going well, the next thing is lined up easily by our calendars, secretaries, or spouses. But when things go south, well, the next thing immediately is in the dock, on trial for its life.
Very often, in the acuity of the darkness, we see the small actions that make up our life as insignificant, and we overlook them. And yet, the greatest crime, especially in a leader, is to downplay—anything. To de-mean something is to extract the meaning from it and throw it away.
Every moment carries an eternity of meaning within it.
Imagine the lighthouse in St. Augustine 100 years ago taking a break for five minutes, justifying it by demeaning the importance of that five minutes. What are the odds a ship would come by right now?
Imagine a ship’s captain taking his eye off the horizon because, after all, this particular ship is unsinkable?
It’s a slippery slope, and one that I have found myself on every time my life takes a twisted turn into that darkness.
When Anna truly grasps the darkness around her, her grand vision of what she is doing crumbles and she is forced to realize how small she is.
When Elizabeth lost her husband, she was forced to return to this simple truth.
We are only called to do the next right thing, not change the world.
Yes, I get more excited than a kid on donut day when we talk about grand designs and visions, but I get even more excited when I see people absolutely committed to mundane responsibilities that have been given to them.
The best leaders don’t focus on their leadership; they focus on their responsibilities. Whether you lead a family, a company, or an organization, we are all given the opportunity to make a difference.
What we do with that opportunity, well that’s up to us and our destiny.
Some choose the well traveled road, and that’s no problem. But others choose the road less traveled by—and as Robert Frost put it, that makes all the difference.