The funnel effect

When you first arrive on this planet, it is as if you are placed at the small end of a funnel. 

Helpless. Dependent. Weak. Fragile. You really don’t have much to offer in terms of marketable skills. Your ability to wail away at all hours of the night may be impressive, but it isn’t going to pay the bills. Slowly you learn to eat, walk, dress yourself, find the washroom, and even talk. Each accomplishment is a milestone, and you may warm the hearts of many along the way, and yet you are just beginning to learn how to meet your own basic needs.

Your world expands. You go to school, church, get involved in the community and begin to blossom. Trying this and that, you begin to discover what you enjoy and what you have been wired with the ability to do. 

This knowledge guides your decisions related to further training, education, and skill development. 

And then, you have reached to top – of the funnel that is; your world has expanded astronomically compared to the diaper days. But now, you need to work your way intentionally back down towards the narrow end. 

The skills you have developed need to be put to use in a specific place. What you have to offer can only be offered to some people on the planet. You may want to change the world but the reality is that you can only change one small part of it. The good people in Portugal will just have to find a way to do without you. Folks in New York will have to do without your cheerful presence. NATO will be forced to scrape by and defend the free world all by themselves. 

Flitting and fluttering here and there is only going to lead to frustration and a lack of influence anywhere.

You can still have a comparatively large vision for what you want to accomplish. But always view yourself as being small.   

Blaise Pascal put it like this: “We are all something, but none of us are everything.”

© Career & Life Direction 2012. All rights reserved.