Only You Can Do Your Job

Anyone may be able to explain the difference between weight and volume to a 6 year old – when to use a measuring cup or when to use a scale.

Anyone may be able to explain the metric system to a 10 year old – why kilo is one thousand but mili is one-thousandth.

Anyone may be able to make a 13 year old girl load the dishwasher – because it has to be done even when you roll your eyes.

Anyone may be able to navigate business calls about shrinking margins and stressful insurance issues from field personnel.

Anyone may be able to take the call from the fine-arts teacher who is dissatisfied with the child’s Google Classroom performance.

Anyone may be able to straighten the house and get the laundry done, even getting dinner on the table in a timely manner.

Anyone may be able to keep your books and make sure the bills get paid – that the financial planning is managed.

Anyone may be able to see to the tasks in your home or in your business.

Anyone may even be able to accomplish those tasks and keep the wheels on the wagon, allowing your family and your business to make it another day or another week.

So many tasks can be accomplished by anyone. But…

Only you can hold them close and say, “we will get through this together.”

Only you can teach them how to support each other and help each other with a difficult new concept.

Only you can learn to treat the young man-child with the respect he so craves, giving him confidence to try again.

Only you can braid her hair while she weeps and tells you of her loneliness.

Only you can hug him as he cries in sorrow for the person he must lay off.

Only you can teach the lesson of caring for those closest to you when you feel completely powerless to care for everyone else.

Only you can sit cross-legged in the floor, broken in your own sorrow and grief, with them in the middle of it all, and say “I love you. I don’t know the answer. But I’m here for it all. The bad times and the good. The sorrow and the victory. We are in this together and we will take the next step together. I love you.”

You see, your role is not so special when it’s evaluated task-by-task, mundanity-by-mundanity. But only you can reach their hearts. Only you can speak to the anguish within them.

I’m holding a space apart for you today, all of you who stand in this strange gap. Anyone can accomplish your tasks. But only you can do your job.

Your job is sacred. No one else can do it.

You have to show up again tomorrow. They need you…and not just anyone can fill that role.

Only you will do.