The town was located on the valley floor in the western Rockies surrounded by snow-capped mountains. The town looked like it was plucked from an old western movie. Main Street was lined with wood storefronts, boardwalks, hitching posts, swinging-door saloons, cigar-store Indians, a blacksmith shop with a forge and, of course, like any authentic western town, Main Street was a dusty, unpaved thoroughfare.
Besides its old-west charm, there was something even more unique about the town. The only inhabitants of the town were geese—therefore the name, Goosetown. These were not your barnyard-variety geese. The geese of Goosetown were just like the people of any other community. They ran businesses, raised families and lived stable, productive lives.
Goosetown was a great place to live, except for when it rained. The rain and runoff from the mountains turned Main Street into one giant mud puddle. Every goose in town tracked it everywhere.
This was no small problem for the geese of Goosetown. Every town meeting turned into a lengthy discussion as to what to do about the mud. Each meeting would end with an approved plan of getting rid of the mud.
Every plan worked. The catch was that every time it rained, the mud was back. Rain, mud, meeting, plan, rid of the mud, rain again, mud again, meeting again, plan again, rid of the mud again—the cycle would repeat itself over and over. No one in Goosetown could remember life being any different.
One day the goose pastor was studying the Great Goose Book when he found two pages stuck together. He carefully pulled the pages apart and found some instructions that he’d never seen before. The subtitle of the text was, “A Description of How to Fly.”
The goose pastor was most interested. You see, none of the geese of Goosetown could fly. The instructions were simple: bend your knees, flap your wings and push off with your feet. The instructions were so simple that the goose pastor gave them a try. As quick as saying, “One, two, three,” the goose pastor was flying around his church study. With the room being too small for developing technique, the pastor perfected the art of flying outside. After soaring, banking and diving through the sky, the goose pastor returned to earth to catch his breath and rest his weary wings.
While thinking of the art of flying, it dawned on the goose pastor that flying was the perfect solution to the mud problem. The geese could just fly over the mud and never get their webbed feet wet. This thought excited the goose pastor so much that he had handbills nailed to every post on Main Street encouraging every goose in Goosetown to attend that Sunday to hear how the mud problem could be solved forever.
The goose pastor’s notices caused quite a stir in town and when Sunday arrived, everyone was in church. After the songs, announcements and offering, the goose pastor got up to the pulpit and began to share the “One, Two, Three” method of flying. Everyone caught on right away and began to whisper, “Great! Awesome! Wonderful! Amazing!” to one another. Because of the enthusiasm, the goose pastor even demonstrated the technique in church. All the geese were flabbergasted. Excitement increased. The pastor was so elated that he had everyone in church try, too. It was some sight to see a church full of geese, each flying above his place in the pew.
By the time the last song was sung and the benediction was spoken, the excitement of the good news was on everyone’s lips as they exited the church. All they could think or talk about was the fascinating new knowledge of flight–as each goose walked home, picked up mud in their webbed feet and tracked it back into their homes.
Author Unknown
Often, we see programs and plans come as proposed solutions to the various problems we experience in this life. All of the meetings of man inevitably fail to provide a lasting cure to the corrupt nature of the human condition. We know what the problem is, we want to fix it–but it seems that most of us lack the conviction to follow through with life-changing commitment.
Our challenge as the human race isn’t that we fail to recognize the “mud” in our world, but that we continually believe deliberation will wipe away the problem. But it comes back–again and again the mud returns.
What is our path forward? How do we begin to see lasting change in our lifetime? It’s simple: become a difference maker. It’s not as hard as it sounds. There’s a false perception that people who make a difference are one-in-a-million. We think that in order to make a difference we need to have influence. This comes from having money, being attractive, being smart, coming from a good family or going to a top-notch school. We tend to count ourselves out because most people don’t think of themselves to be particularly exceptional.
But that’s not what equips someone to be a difference maker. You don’t need to have advantages to be a person who can change the world. You only need one thing, and that’s passion. A person who has influence is not someone who masters others, but someone who is mastered by one amazing life-gripping thing that fuels a meaning for existence. You aren’t the difference maker, it’s what drives you that enables you to change the world.
The goal of human existence cannot be to acquire wealth, drive a fancy car, live in a beautiful home and be adored by everyone. What does a person have to gain by winning the world only to die without making a difference–without meaning? Our goal to “fix” the issues plaguing humanity, therefore, cannot be to elevate others to the acquisition of materialistic goods–but to offer significance to others and the ability to become difference makers, too.
So, what drives you? What is the one thing that has completely gripped your life and gives you meaning–a reason to get up in the morning? Don’t have one?–Let’s talk.
Westerman.Blog 