The Zeros

Have you ever felt like a zero?

Maybe no one listens to you, or you don’t believe you are noticed. Or perhaps you have always felt like the least good-looking, the dumbest, and the ugliest.

You may feel like a zero.

And whether or not that’s true, I don’t know.

But what I do know is that zeros are vitally important.

Don’t believe me? Congratulations, now you know what it feels like to be wrong. Allow me to prove it to you.

What if your banker took your deposit of $5,000 and input $500?
That’s a $4,500 difference.

Zeros are important.

Everyone has importance. There isn’t a human being alive right now that doesn’t have a value of some sort. Sure, someone’s value may include any information they can provide to find the money from the bank they robbed or the body they hid, but they’re still important.

I was never a genius at math, but you’d think I could remember to add a little bitty zero to the long multiplication.

I attended a job fair in Broken Arrow, OK, a few years ago, and I was applying at a prominent place of employment. The lady in charge of the whole thing kept coming over and talking to me.

I had dressed up, shaved, fixed my hair, spritzed on some cologne, and brushed my teeth — not everyone there had.

In addition to those things, she saw something on my resume that stuck out to her.

This job required each applicant to do basic math, among other things. Problem-solving. Then they would take that sheet and score it.

I finished all that I had to do and awaited their approval.

The lady brought back my sheet of paper. I had gotten everything correct except the one multiplication table on it. It was long multiplication.

I’m not a mathematician, but I was shocked that I no longer knew how to multiply. I went through my memory bank and pulled out the dust-covered multiplication cards. 1×1 still equaled one. What went wrong?

As it turns out, I hadn’t remembered to put the ZERO on the second line. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s okay. It’s been a long time since middle school and those long multiplication days.

So I added a zero on the second line, and I was good to go.

All that to say, zeros have value.

And no matter what you’re going through or what you’re feeling, YOU HAVE VALUE.

I’M SORRY FOR YELLING.

I just want you to understand that. You are worth more than you realize.

You are worth knowing. You are worth listening to. You are worth noticing. You are worth believing in.
You are worth putting effort into.

to those who need to realize their significance,
– Caleb