Increase Your Impact
A Lesson From a Soldier and a Honeybee
Do you ever question the impact of your life, whether you are a good person and make valuable contributions? The movie Saving Private Ryan asks such questions. During WWII U.S. Secretary of State, George C. Marshall, was shocked to learn that three brothers from the Ryan family had been killed in the line of duty, but he was especially distraught that their mother received telegrams of their deaths on the same day. The horror inspired his decision to send a small cadre of soldiers led by Captain John Miller to extract the last of the Ryan brothers and send him home. As the Captain lies mortally wounded on the bridge in Ramelle, he whispers to private Ryan “Earn this!” meaning the sacrifice the men made to bring him home. The final scene shows the seventy-five-year-old Ryan kneeling in front of the grave of his beloved rescuer. Ryan, with tear-filled eyes, stands and turns to his wife, “Tell me I’m a good man” which she immediately confirms. In the waning years of Private Ryan’s life, he desperately wants to know from those closest to him, if he had indeed earned the sacrifice of his rescue by becoming a good man.
We keep circling back to the question of our impact throughout our lives during life disrupters, failures, disappointments, or as we advance in age. Many people question their impact. This is true for highly successful and regular folks. This doubt causes some to double down with ambitious plans to be remembered after they die. History is littered with the debris of such people. Others live with quiet disappointment. Still others make a course correction from selfishness to becoming good people.
What is a good life? The Hebrew word for ‘good’ is often translated to English as “righteous” connoting mercy and kindness, acting justly towards others, and doing it all with humility. This Hebrew notion of ‘good’ is further described in the book of Micah 6:8 ESV:
He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
This is a trajectory that leads to impact. Still, along the way, many of us question whether we have done enough, and we desire more.
When I question my impact, I take a lesson from the honeybee. She has an official job description that defines her day, but her unofficial job has the greatest impact. In her short life of five to six weeks she secretes the wax used in the hive and forms it into honeycombs. She forages for the nectar and pollen brought into the hive and transforms the nectar into honey, producing 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey. Producing royal jelly to feed to the queen and young larvae, tending to the needs of larvae and queens, defending the hive against intruders, and maintaining optimal conditions in the hive are her official assignments. The worker bee is aptly named.
Fascinating and inspiring is the incidental impact she has while going about her official duties. Bees are herbivorous, deriving all their nutrition from the pollen and nectar of flowers. The honeybee's body is covered with branched setae, or feathery hairs, which are unique to the bees. Pollen grains stick to these hairs as the bee forages on flowers. Some of the pollen is transferred to new plants—resulting in fertilization of other plants—as bees carry pollen between the male and female parts. The honeybee is the world's most important pollinator of food crops, not to mention other plants and flowers. It is estimated that one third of the food that we consume each day relies on pollination mainly by bees. All of this happens secondarily.
Pollination is, however, quite fragile. Sadly, over the past fifteen years, colonies of bees have been disappearing, and the reason remains unknown. Referred to as “colony collapse disorder,” billions of honeybees across the world are leaving their hives, never to return. Humans can do their part to counteract this whether by choosing garden plants to attract honeybees, building community gardens, teaching their children and grandchildren about these powerful pollinators, beekeeping, and other ways to help honeybees prosper. An awareness of the impact of honeybees as pollinators is crucial for their—and our—survival.
Bees reveal the power of unofficial actions in our lives. The image of pollen stuck to the setae of the bee is a powerful reminder that the impact of our lives is far bigger than we think. Impact is not always through the obvious and noticeable effects we produce, but in the incidental things we do. No task is too small. In fact, it is often in the small tasks done lovingly that we find our deepest purpose and meaning because they are relational, not merely transactional. A father patiently untangling his daughter’s hair, a mother lovingly changing her toddler’s clothing for the fourth time in a day, an adult child visiting an aging parent, a stranger offering an anonymous kindness, these are all actions that cross-fertilize kindness, justice, and humility.
Human communities are also fragile and susceptible to the “colony collapse disorder.” Hyper-individualism, self-absorption, fear, and silos threaten our communities—or hives. When we overly invest in our official jobs and roles, we blind ourselves to seeing the impact of the unofficial and incidental. We need an awareness of the importance of cross-pollination. Like Private Ryan, when we commit to being a good person for the benefit of others, our communities become less fragile.
We are like worker bees with pollen sticking to our setae spreading life and growth as we go from place to place. We might never know our impact, but we can be assured it is greater than we think. Mother Teresa once said, “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” That creates impact.