Big Things Rarely Feel Big While You’re Building Them
Lasagna Love is pretty good at celebrating other people.nWe celebrate the Lasagna Chef who made their first delivery and the one who just made their 500th. We celebrate neighbors, volunteers, milestones, acts of kindness, partnerships, birthdays, anniversaries, National Lasagna Day, and just about any excuse we can find to remind people that what they do matters. Apparently, I am significantly less skilled at applying this philosophy to myself.
I probably should have realized this years ago.
I was at Fenway with Lasagna Love 3 years ago, standing beside one of our leaders during another one of those surreal moments when this thing we had all been quietly building was suddenly very public.
I remember telling her, “Breathe. Take this in.” Excellent advice. I did not take it. I was probably already thinking about whatever needed to happen next. That’s generally how my brain works. If something needs to be done, I do it. If I don’t know how to do it, I figure it out. If it takes six months, seventeen attempts, several mild identity crises and an unreasonable amount of coffee…well, eventually we’re getting there. Once something is finished, though, my brain doesn’t usually register it as some remarkable accomplishment. The equation is much simpler than that. Could I do it? Apparently, yes. Done. Next. This is a wonderful personality trait when something is on fire. It is a terrible personality trait when something deserves to be celebrated.
Celebrating the Power of Community Volunteering
Recently, a group of us gathered at a Minnesota Twins game where Lasagna Love was being recognized for something that still feels ridiculous when I say it out loud: Together, this movement has fed with more 3 million neighbors.
Before any of that happened, though, we were standing in a waiting area. And that may have been one of the most memorable parts. There were Lasagna Chefs and leaders who had traveled from all over. Someone caught an early flight from Virginia. Someone drove in from South Dakota. Others came from around Minnesota, some traveling a few hours and bringing their families along. And then there was Kathy.
Regional Coordinator Kathy Kirschner and I have known each other for about five years. We know the history. The ups and downs. The things we’ve figured out and the things that made us want to bang our heads against a wall. We know one another’s strengths. There is trust there, belief in one another, and that familiar question we’ve asked in a hundred different ways over the years: How can we make this better, together? Except we’d never actually met in person. Think about how weird that is. And somehow, meeting her didn’t really feel like meeting her. It felt like seeing an old friend.
How Do You Reunite With Someone You’ve Never Met?
I’ve thought about that ever since. Because that waiting area didn’t feel like a room full of strangers introducing themselves. It felt comfortable. We laughed. We joked. We traded ideas. I heard stories about what Lasagna Love meant to people. I watched volunteers light up talking about the work they had done and the neighbors they had met. I saw how proud they were to bring their families and friends into this part of their lives. And I was probably even more excited to meet them then the other way around. These were my kind of people. Completely surrounded by good hearted humans. And standing there together made me understand something about community volunteering that no dashboard ever could. Not because we all think exactly alike. Trust me, put enough Lasagna Love folks in a room and we can develop passionate opinions about almost anything! Ricotta versus cottage cheese alone could probably take down a small government. It was something deeper. Everyone in that space had made a decision somewhere in their life that helping another person mattered. They believed kindness was worth their time. They believed people they may never meet were worth caring about. We were all there to serve and provide kindness to anyone who needed it.That’s the common ground.
For a little while, everything else drowned out. There wasn’t a problem to solve or a next milestone to chase. There was simply this incredible sense of celebration and pride. Look what we did. Not look what I did. Look what we did. And that’s when something clicked for me.
Big Things Rarely Feel Big While You’re Building Them
Most of the time, they feel incredibly ordinary. They look like someone grocery shopping after work. A Lasagna Chef checking their matches. A Program Ambassador answering a question. A Regional Coordinator solving a problem nobody else will ever know existed. Someone making a donation. Someone making an extra stop for ricotta. Someone washing yet another pan. Someone opening the door to a neighbor they’ve never met.
One email. One delivery. One problem solved. One more person deciding, Yes. I’ll help. None of those moments comes with a Jumbotron. And yet somehow, enough ordinary moments stacked on top of one another became more than 3 million neighbors. That number is almost impossible for me to comprehend but the individual stories aren’t. Those I understand. When someone tells me we’ve reached millions of people, my brain doesn’t naturally see a giant number. I see people. I see the messages I’ve read. The families I’ve learned about. The Lasagna Chefs I’ve gotten to know. I see stories of people walking through some of the most brutal seasons of their lives and someone, somewhere, deciding to make their Tuesday a little easier.
Those I can understand. Three million? My brain still struggles with that one. Maybe that’s because movements aren’t actually experienced in millions. They’re experienced one person at a time. And suddenly, I was standing beside some of the people responsible for those individual stories while an entire stadium was about to hear what they had done. Lasagna Love tends to be pretty quiet about this stuff. We put our heads down. We serve. We keep going. That day, though, we got loud. And I loved every second of it.
This Time, I Remembered to Breathe
Eventually, we were standing in front of the stadium. Lasagna Love was on the Jumbotron. Our accomplishments were being announced. My name was called. And somewhere in the stands, my kids were yelling:
“THAT’S MY MOM!” They’ve been part of this journey from the beginning. They’ve lived through the long hours, demanding schedules, travel, phone calls, and all the times Mom’s brain was technically sitting at the dinner table while some portion of it was still trying to solve something three states away. Usually, I travel without them. Demanding schedules and school tend to win that battle. This time, Nick and the kids were there. Later, when I watched the video and heard them yelling, my heart fluttered. They were proud of me. And for once, I didn’t immediately chase the next thing. I took it in.
The stadium. The people beside me. My family in the stands. Three million neighbors. All of it. Head held high. We did this. And here’s the strange part. No single person standing there could claim that accomplishment. I certainly couldn’t. Yet every single person mattered to it. That’s one of the beautiful contradictions I’ve come to understand about movements like this. We are part of something monstrously bigger than any one of us, and somehow it still takes every single one of us. Think about that. A homemade lasagna sitting on someone’s kitchen counter doesn’t look like something capable of connecting millions of people. It’s dinner. One volunteer driving across town doesn’t look like a movement. It’s someone driving across town. A Program Ambassador answering a question doesn’t look monumental. Neither does a donor giving what they can, a Regional Coordinator working through a challenge, a child sprinkling cheese on top of a lasagna, or someone sharing our volunteer link with a friend.
On their own, these things look almost painfully ordinary. But ordinary doesn’t mean insignificant. Put enough of them together and something completely different begins to take shape. That’s how something enormous gets built………Quietly.
Maybe We Need to Get Better at Looking Back
I don’t think I’m alone in this. A lot of the people who find their way to Lasagna Love are doers. Helpers. The people who notice what needs to happen and start doing it before anyone has finished asking.And when you’re wired that way, accomplishment can start feeling more like expectation than celebration. You did the thing because the thing needed doing. Of course you did. Now what’s next? I know this feeling extremely well. I don’t spend much time comparing myself to other people because I’ve never found it particularly useful. Everyone has their own path, their own challenges, their own gifts and their own stuff they’re trying to figure out. My internal measurement has always been much simpler. Can I do this? If I can, I do it. If I can’t, I’m probably going to turn over every rock I can find until I figure out how. Once it’s done, though, I rarely stop and think, Wow. Look what I accomplished. I expected myself to eventually get there. So I move on. But there is something we’re missing when we live entirely in what’s next. We’re missing the view. There will always be another problem.Another family waiting. Another idea. Another goal. Another thing we can make better. I don’t want to lose that part of myself. It’s gotten me through some impossible things, and frankly, I like her. But I’m beginning to understand that stopping to celebrate doesn’t mean the work matters any less. Sometimes honoring the work means standing still long enough to see what all those ordinary days became. I needed Minnesota to remind me of that. Five years of knowing someone became a hug with an old friend I’d never met. Thousands upon thousands of individual acts of kindness became millions of neighbors connected. Years of long days became my children yelling, “That’s my mom!” from the stands. And for once, I wasn’t thinking about where we needed to go next. I was looking at how incredibly far we’d already come. Maybe you need that reminder, too. Whatever you’re building, whether a community, a family, a career, a friendship, a new version of yourself, it probably won’t feel monumental on a Tuesday afternoon. It’ll probably feel something like groceries, emails, laundry, showing up, trying again, and doing the next ordinary thing that needs to be done. That’s the funny thing about big things.
You usually don’t know you’re building one while you’re building it. Every once in a while, though, life gives you a Jumbotron. When it does? Take your own damn advice. Breathe.And take it in.
Until next time,
