Big Red and the Wall of Doom

One summer in my early twenties, I was a counselor at a summer camp for gifted and talented youth. One of our activities was a high ropes course, and the group of kids I was shepherding was directed to our first feature: the climbing wall. It was eighteen or twenty feet tall and straight vertical. It was big, it was imposing, and nobody wanted to be the first to attempt it.

Until Big Red stepped up. 

Big Red was a student I already knew, because our families were friends. Her mom was the psychologist at the middle school where my Mom was a teacher. I’d known Big Red for years. That wasn’t her real name, of course. She’d got the nickname because she had long, curly red hair--and she stood about five-foot-nothing. She was tiny by any objective measure, but her smile and her heart were anything but.

So after a moment or two, Big Red came forward. She hooked the guide rope to her harness, approached the wall, and began climbing. She climbed like there was nothing to stop her--and there wasn’t. She reached the top in about 30 seconds. 

And then everything changed. All of a sudden, everyone wanted a shot at the wall. The other students all seemed to think, “Hey, if she can do it, why not me?” It was as if she had given the rest of us permission to dare the wall. And we did.

As you go about the activities of your day, completing your daily goals and defeating your daily monsters, you may not even be aware of the people around you. They have goals and monsters of their own, and seeing you conquer yours may just give them the strength they need to conquer theirs. All they need is to be shown the way to begin, to see that it is possible.

By doing what you do, steadily and faithfully, you may be somebody’s Big Red.

And you don’t need to be exceptional to do it. Success, I have found, is not a matter of gifts or talents, but of will. If you have the will, you can find the way.

So don’t give up. Do what you need to do--little things, mundane things, unremarkable things. In so doing, you might just be giving someone else the strength to do the same.