My mother painted the Houses of Parliament in the basement of our century home. Early on a Saturday morning, years ago now, I heard her toiling away in the rather unattractive and unwelcoming basement.

When I crept down the stairs, I found her in London; a London she had painted on 10-foot panels of foam board for a small community theater bereft of funds.  For many children, this moment might have been odd. For me, it was rather normal.

My mother was always doing something odd for someone and doing that something for free. The “doing things for people” sat fine with me. However, the “for free” part, as a teenager scrounging for every dollar I could squeeze out of a part time job, that part confounded me.

With Mother’s Day upon us, I was thinking about how that confusion transformed into a most cherished clarity… and it happened like this:

Time and time again, there she would be, painting detailed scenery, serving on boards, creating educational programming for community centers, visiting senior citizens we weren’t related to…. and all for nothing.

At least I thought it was for nothing. Little did I know how those lessons of selflessness and service were slowly, with a kind of genetic osmosis, seeping their way into my DNA.

What resulted from her silent, illustrative appreciation for service was a deeper understanding of my place and role on this earth. She showed me that either I could choose to be a cog in a mechanism for good, or I could be a sabot wedged into those cogs, merely slowing progress.

At first blush, aspiring to be just a “cog” may seem downright uninspiring, undistinguished….and well, kind of lazy.  But my mother’s actions spoke volumes on just the opposite of those terms. Her life was, and still is to this day, about an understanding of, and acting on, the belief that we are all connected. It is an understanding that everyone is a “cog;” no more, or less important than the next. That we should be working for something far greater than the total square footage of our homes, or the price tag of our cars.

Being a “cog” in the mechanism for good is the most important role we can play in life. That’s not to say we don’t pursue or own goals. We can strive to become CEOs or the best landscaper in the business, but how we get to those goals collectively defines us as a society.

As we work towards our goals, are we also looking for ways to be of service to others? In doing so, remember that each little act of help, each hour of service, oils the cogs and keeps that mechanism for good running smoothly.

I am proud to say I am just a cog, because I understand the fact that there’s really no “just” about it. My life is not just about me; I am no more, and no less, important than anyone else.  What is important is how I choose to live my life.

What is important is that we all look for ways to be cogs in a mechanism for good. What is important is that we all continually seek out our own Houses of Parliament, and paint them with as much passion, with as much care, and with as much importance as my mother did in the basement of our century home.