Brought a few errant carts in at the Home Depot parking lot. Also cleaned up the kitchen after my wife made a very nice cake for my son’s birthday. Happy Birthday Zachary!

Brandon Phillips with some very happy kids

Here’s a story on the back pages of Yahoo Sports about how Cincinnati Red’s baseball star Brandon Phillips showed up at an 8th grade baseball game. One 8th grader had invited the star to watch his game on Twitter. Since Mr. Phillips was dining in the area on one of his rare days off, he had a few hours to spare.

So he decided to give his time.

He stayed the entire baseball game, signed autographs and encouraged the kids. You can only imagine how excited the kids were to see him.

The ordinary for Mr. Phillips would have probably been to head back to his house, go out with his friends, spend time with his girl friend, see a movie, or do whatever else he likes to do in his spare time.

But he didn’t. He went beyond the ordinary to give a group of kids something special.

What about us?  Are we happy when we just do the repetitive, trivial things that we’ve done for years? Are we happy with ordinary?

I would venture a guess that doing the ordinary does not really make us happy.

After going beyond the ordinary, we know we’ve done something that matters.