I remember the scorching summer when I was 8 years old. I remember running the wheels of the big toy car across my fingers, up the walls, and along the armrest until one day, I dropped it. The front windshield shattered against the cracked tile floor of our living room. Gazing upon the wreckage of my favorite toy, tears stung at my eyes and I ran to my mother.
“Mommy! Mommy! My car broke!” I choked. “Can I get a new one?”
My mother looked down at me with a kind of sorrow I couldn’t place and said “I’m sorry honey. We can’t afford to buy a new one just yet.”
I wasn’t familiar enough with money to understand what she meant so I ran away, slamming the door to my bedroom as I wept. The next evening, as I sat on my bed attempting to read a book, my mother knocked on my door.
“What is it?” I inquired.
“I have a surprise for you,” My mother said. She pushed the door aside and crept in, her hand behind her back. Given our conversation from yesterday, I was pretty sure I knew what the surprise was. Nevertheless, I was eager.
“WHAT!?” I asked, my eyes shining like stars against the night.
Slowly, she revealed what she was hiding and it was –
I deflated. It was a car. But it was a small one, hardly a quarter of the size of the broken one.
Taking in my disappointment, my mother rested her hand on my shoulder and said, “I know it’s not as nice or big as the one you broke, but never underestimate the difference small things can make.”
I didn’t understand what she meant immediately, but what I did understand was that I wanted to be able to buy that big car one day. I didn’t want to look at my children in the same sorrowful way my mother looked at me. And so I worked, spending extra time after school to maintain my grades, finding internships, and picking up jobs whenever and wherever I could. For a small thing, I aimed high. My mother’s words echoed in my mind and I slowly began to understand what she meant.
As I stare out the window of my corporate building at the cars below, they seem small. Too small. In fact, no car I could ever get would be big enough from up here. The large, magnificent cars that were once all I wanted have suddenly become small and of little value to me. Too easy to pluck off the road from the towering building upon which I stand. And suddenly it dawns upon me that perhaps I perceived my mother’s words incorrectly. I’d taken her message to mean that small things should be expanded or replaced with bigger things when in reality, small things are enough.
