There wasn’t much opportunity to make a difference yesterday. It’s still frigid outside and my daughter needs my car as her’s won’t start and, did I mention, it’s frigid outside?

I was to have gone out last night and participated in something that offered up real opportunity to make a difference, but between a cold that keeps scratching at my throat, a meeting that started late because of the traffic and my daughter needing my car, I didn’t go.

I did shovel my walk and my neighbour’s walk — I must get extra points for that when it’s this cold out, right? I did fill the bird feeder twice and I did have a conversation with a friend who really needed someone to listen to them. And I remind myself, there are small significances in all of that. Those things added value to someone’s life.

It is, I believe, one of our greatest needs. To feel like our life has meaning. That what we are doing adds value, makes a difference.

And I struggle with the everyday aspect of my commitment to consciously make a difference every day, knowing, it is a good commitment. How easy it would be to not shovel that walk, not fill the bird feeder, not listen to a friend because I was in the middle of working on a project, not lend my daughter my car.

How easy it would be to focus on just my life, my needs, my wants and ignore the world around me.

Yet, when I do that, become insular, ignore the world around me, I cut myself off from feeling connected to the world around me.

It isn’t about the kudos I get by doing ‘good deed’s or how making a difference makes me feel. It’s about how making a difference connects me to the world around me. And in that connection, I feel part of something bigger than just me, something grander than just the design of my day. I feel connected to the grand scheme of the universe, to the workings of the world around me. I feel like in the big picture, my life has meaning — and in that meaning I am content. Because in that meaning I am living on purpose — inspiring people to live their lives with eyes and hearts and minds wide open in Love, celebrating the small and the big things they do to make a world of difference.