There Is No Such Thing As Small Moments

​Two weeks ago, my favorite sports team - Notre Dame - was a team that just months earlier played in the national championship game. But this brutal Notre Dame fan Sunday morning, they’re 0–2. Winless. Any chance of a return visit to the national championship game is all but gone before the season is a month old.

The hardest part? Notre Dame's two losses are by a combined total of 4 points. The difference in each game just a few plays; a missed tackle, a bobbled extra-point, a dropped pass. All plays that in the moment may not have seemed big but in the grand scheme of things turn out to be quite big.

It’s sobering how fragile success can be. A season that once promised to go Notre Dame players and fans' way is quickly becoming the season that got away.

But that's life, isn't it? We tell ourselves that life turns on the “big things” - the weddings, the funerals, the new jobs, the diagnoses. But more often than not, it’s the small things. The phone call we didn’t return. The apology we never offered. The opportunity we brushed aside because it didn’t feel urgent in the moment.

Most of the time, we don’t even know which moments are the difference-makers until we look back. That’s the fragile mystery of life: no moment is truly inconsequential.

Maybe divorce was the big difference-maker in life, or maybe it was the conversation you longed to have but couldn't long before any divorce papers were signed.

Maybe the new job was the big difference-maker in life, or maybe it was the hundreds of individual stories you got to hear from people you work with in that job that helped you better understand your own story.

Maybe alcohol was the big difference-maker in life, or maybe it was each successive drink that ultimately introduced you to the pain in your life you weren't going to meet otherwise.

Maybe becoming a father was the big difference-maker in life, or maybe it was the hundreds of individual looks from a son that came to shape the way the world looks to a dad.

Maybe the friendship that was never supposed to be a friendship was the big difference-maker in life, or maybe the hours of conversations inside that friendship were the hours that allowed you to feel what connection can actual feel like.

I don't know.

I just know that every moment in life counts if you stop to count it. Every moment in life is a game-changer if you're paying any attention at all to the game of life.

Life can trick you into believing it's all about winning or losing, getting the job or losing the job, getting the relationship or losing the relationship, and maybe there is some truth to that. But the most important truth is that the winning and losing almost always happen long before the moment we feel like a victor or a loser.

So the best life strategy isn’t just to treat every moment as a game-changer, it’s to believe that any moment can also be a game-saver. Because just as a season can be lost by a few plays, it can be redeemed by a few as well. And that’s the hope, that no matter the record today, tomorrow’s moment still counts.

So make them count...