Is it important?

“Is het belangrijk?” My son asked my wife. Is it important?

What you were doing on the phone, your work, is it important? Those people, are they important?

Well, my wife answered, it’s important to the company, it’s important to those people. Is it important for the world? For mankind? Well, no.

“Is it important to you?” he asked further.

Well, wow, yet another tough question. It depends on the perspective. Does this work function matter in the bigger scheme of things? No. But it’s important for her to get this “little” thing right because it’s part of a bigger thing (her job) which is part of a bigger, more important thing (her career) which is part of a bigger thing (her identity). I suppose it can go on and on.

It’s important to me. So does that mean it’s important. Yes, it does.

But it does matter if it’s important to you. So no, the little job, the project for the client. It’s not important to me. I suppose it depends also on which scale we’re measuring importance. Is it more important than XYZ? Than ABC? Yes, no, etc.

It was one of those quick-but-deep innocent questions from a kid. Amazing how they come up with stuff we’d probably pay $3,495 to learn in a 4-day seminar.