Be That Street Sweeper

“This woman can sweep o, she’s so serious”. Ada’s voice jolted me to reality and I turned to look at the woman she was referring to.

The woman was bent down sweeping with so much vigour and one would think she was expecting to see gold on the sidewalk of the tarred road she was sweeping.

“Ha she can really sweep o, see the attention she is paying to the road” I retorted.

We both stood watching the woman and then I muttered out loud “sweep so well that even the angels will notice, even Ada now has noticed”, I was recalling the quote by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Do you know the quote”? I asked Ada and she shook her head in the negative all the while watching the woman who seemed not to notice us or the people walking hurriedly past her in different directions.

We were waiting for the driver that had gone in search of change for us.

“Imagine this man o, I asked him if he had change and he was nodding now he’s keeping us and time is going” it was Ada speaking and I responded “you clearly tried to avoid this o, I mean you asked him 3 times abi’?

“Ehen na” She sighed. 

We were on our way to work and were running late.

I turned again to look at the woman who swept like she was competing for an award. I spoke up again “she is sweeping as if people will not walk on the road again when in fact it will be sandy in a few minutes”.

Ada laughed and as we spoke the driver came with the money and we continued our journey to work but through the journey I kept muttering the lines from Martin Luther’s quote to myself “sweep so well that even the angels will notice”.

Isn’t that how we should do things and execute tasks? Shouldn’t we like that woman work with passion and the consciousness that our role no matter how small is important?

Whatever your work do it with love or leave it but if you cannot leave it then love it and give it your best.

Your work is only as inconsequential and unimportant as you see it and make it to be.

You are part of a system that would not function well without your full participation and as Rev. Martin Luther King said “If you are called to be a street sweeper, you should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. You should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”