Sometimes molehills should be mountains.
I’m usually not of that opinion as way too often small details of minimal consequence become mountainously larger than life rifts between people – the infamous mountains made from molehills. But on this particular day, what everyone saw as a molehill, needed mountain status.
We were gathered in an all hands meeting. The corporate executive from human resources was in town and among those presenting. He worked through his agenda on benefits, changes that were coming, and the like, and then ended on what typically would be viewed as a “making-a-mountain-out-of-a molehill” item.
Three weeks or so earlier, we had all dutifully gotten up and meandered outside when the fire alarm went off. Like most organizations, we had a designated gathering spot with assigned individuals to be accountable for by observing them as “safely out of harm's way.” We’d done this many times and that day, like we normally did, most of us just got outside the door and stayed next to the building or at least not far beyond that. Let’s just say little, if any, of our “official plan” was carried out.
Our executive started in. “Three weeks ago you all did quite well at getting up from your workstations and desks and vacating the building when what you thought was a fire drill alarm went off. And then most of you highly intelligent people we’ve worked hard to find and hire stood with your heads down in your phones next to a building that was actually on fire.”
The room broke into laughter at the comment, acknowledging our seemingly inconsequential yet not-so-intelligent guilt. We also suspected correctly that we were also about to receive the proverbial “mountain out of a molehill” diatribe about taking safety drills seriously. As the laughter and chattering began dying down he began.
“I was working on the 85th floor of the North Tower when the plane hit.” Suddenly you could have heard a pin drop. “What you don’t hear about the attack on 9/11 was how many lives were saved by safety drills. Just like you, we were annoyed by all the “silly” drills we had to go through each month. But on that day, in total darkness we descended down the stairwells just as we knew how to do – right hand on the rail, left hand on the shoulder of the person in front of you. Tens of thousands of us left safely because we had begrudgingly practiced how to do just that over and over again.”
Point powerfully taken.
Our molehill safety drills had mountain consequences. Familiarity, indifference, and apathy had anesthetized us. Our actions we had laughed at just moments before suddenly didn’t seem so funny after all.
The next drill all of us were right where we were supposed to be and accounting for the people who we were assigned to find. No one had to ask what had changed. We had made a molehill out of a mountain and we all knew it was time to reset our perspectives. Some “molehills” really are mountains after all.
“Always be ready! Don’t let familiarity and indifference turn mountains into molehills for you. You don't know when the Son of Man will come.”
– Jesus (Matthew 24:44 - New Gatortoad Version)