A Great Street Sweeper 09.01.09

Today I spent my lunch hour riding to the mall to get a much needed haircut.  While I was either waiting on my turn, or waiting on my brother to get finished up so we could leave, I can’t remember which, I was reminded of the following quote.

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He 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.

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

While waiting, the mall janitor, an elderly man, doing his regular stroll through the wing where the haircut place is, noticed what must have been a small piece of tape on the floor.  I didn’t notice it at all, so it’s obvious that he had an eye for spotting things, even the smallest, that shouldn’t be laying around.  He took a scraper tool from his cart, scraped it off the floor, picked it up and threw it in the garbage can on his cart.  Making the floor spotless.

It wasn’t the fact that a janitor and a street sweeper have similar jobs that reminded me of the quote, but the fact that he took the time to do the best job possible.  Now I’m sure someone would say that was part of his job, but I think a majority of the people that would occupy that same position, would have just turned their head and not taken the time to clean off an unnoticeable piece of tape from the floor.  Sure he was just doing his job, but I think he was doing his job as Shakespeare wrote poetry.

Obviously I like quotes probably more than the average person, which is why I suppose this one came to mind when I saw that occur.