12/17/2025
Nobody ever paused CPR to ask me what my GPA was. No dying man ever grabbed my wrist at 3:00 AM, looked me in the eye, and asked, "Did you graduate with honors?"
They only asked one thing: "Am I going to be okay?"
My name is Martha. I am 74 years old. I don’t have a LinkedIn profile. I don’t have a TED Talk. I drove a used sedan for twenty years and my retirement party was a sheet cake in the breakroom.
But for five decades, I was the last face people saw before they left this world, and the first face they saw when they came back to it. I was an ER nurse in a city that doesn't sleep, where the sirens never stop.
I remember the day I realized the world had gotten its priorities backwards.
It was Career Day at a local high school about five years ago. The gymnasium was packed. The air smelled of floor wax and teenage anxiety. I looked around at the other presenters. It was intimidating.
To my left was a tech entrepreneur, wearing a hoodie that probably cost more than my monthly mortgage, talking about "disrupting the market" and "scaling synergy." To my right was a corporate lawyer in a sharp Italian suit, handing out glossy brochures about intern programs. There was a financial planner flashing a laser pointer at a graph showing compound interest.
The kids were mesmerized. They were terrified of debt, hungry for status, and desperate to know the formula for being "Someone."
Then there was me.
I walked in wearing my old comfortable scrubs and my stethoscope around my neck. I didn't have a PowerPoint. I didn't have a "brand." I just had a badge that was scratched from years of use and hands that were dry from a thousand washings.
When it was my turn, the room went quiet. I didn't stand behind the podium. I walked right up to the bleachers.
"I’m not here to tell you how to make your first million," I said. My voice shook a little, then steadied. "I’m here to tell you what it feels like to be the only person awake in a terrifyingly quiet hallway, listening to the rhythm of a ventilator, praying for a stranger’s lungs to expand just one more time."
The kids stopped scrolling on their phones.
"I’m here to tell you about the smell of fear," I continued. "And I’m here to tell you about the specific, holy silence that falls over a room when a doctor calls the time of death. I want to tell you what it’s like to hold a mother as she screams, and what it’s like to wash the body of a homeless veteran with the same tenderness you’d give a king, simply because he was a human being and he deserved dignity."
I looked them in the eyes.
"It isn't glamorous. You won’t get a corner office with a view of the skyline. You will come home with aching feet and a broken heart more often than you’d like. But I promise you this: You will never, ever wonder if your work mattered."
The shift in the room was palpable. The questions they asked the tech guy were about stocks and salaries. The questions they asked me were different.
"Do you ever get scared?" a boy in a varsity jacket asked. "Every single shift," I said.
"Do you cry?" a girl in the front row asked. "I cry in the car. I cry in the shower. I cry because I care," I answered.
After the bell rang and the gym cleared out, a skinny boy with messy hair lingered behind. He looked down at his worn-out sneakers, kicking at a scuff mark on the floor.
"My dad is a janitor," he whispered, almost like it was a secret he was ashamed of. "At a big office building downtown. People walk past him like he’s invisible. Like he’s part of the furniture."
He looked up at me, his eyes wet. "He comes home so tired. But he says he keeps the place safe. He says he stops the germs so the business people don't get sick."
I reached out and took that young man’s hand. "Son, listen to me. Your dad is a hero. The world stops spinning without people like your dad. We have enough 'visionaries' in corner offices. We don't have enough people willing to do the hard, invisible work that actually keeps civilization running. Taking care of people? Cleaning up the messes? That is everything."
We live in a culture that is obsessed with titles. We teach our children that success looks like a verified checkmark next to their name or a salary that creates envy. We praise the disruptors and the influencers.
But let me tell you something about the real world.
When the power grid fails in a winter storm, a résumé won’t save you. An electrician will. When the pipe bursts and floods your basement, a diploma won’t save you. A plumber will. When your child burns up with a fever at midnight, your stock portfolio won’t save you. A nurse will.
We have forgotten the nobility of service. We have forgotten the sacredness of the "essential."
Last winter, I received a letter. It was from that boy with the messy hair. He’s not a boy anymore.
“Dear Martha,” it read. “I almost dropped out. I thought I wasn't smart enough for college, and I didn't want to be invisible like I thought my dad was. But I remembered what you said about dignity. I’m an EMT now. Last week, I saved a guy who had a heart attack on the subway platform. Nobody asked me for my business card. I just did the work. Thank you for telling me it mattered.”
I sat at my kitchen table, reading that letter over a cup of lukewarm coffee, and I wept.
I wept because he got it. He understood the secret that so many chasing the "American Dream" miss completely.
Success isn't about how many people serve you. Success is about how many people you serve.
So, here is my plea to you.
The next time you talk to a teenager, please, for the love of God, stop asking them, "Where are you going to college?" or "What do you want to be?"
Ask them: "Who do you want to help?"
Change the metric.
And if they say, "I want to be a welder," or "I want to work with the elderly," or "I want to drive a truck," don’t just give them a polite, pitying nod.
Look them in the eye. Tell them you are proud. Tell them that their hands are going to build the world and heal the broken. Tell them that when the night gets dark—and it always does—we aren't looking for a CEO. We are looking for someone who decided to show up.
We need them. We need them more than they will ever know.
