Have you ever wondered how much power fits inside the smallest of packages? Imagine standing on a crowded, dusty train platform in India in 1946. Amidst the noise and the rushing crowds, there sat a tiny woman. She was frail, standing barely five feet tall, and she owned almost nothing in the world. To the people rushing by, she looked like just another weary traveler. But inside her heart, a fire was burning that was bright enough to warm the entire world.
Her name was Agnes, but the world would come to know her as Mother Teresa.
Before she became a household name, she was a teacher and a principal at a lovely school in Calcutta. She lived safely behind the high walls of a convent, surrounded by gardens and peace. But Agnes had a secret struggle. Every time she looked out the window, past the beautiful gardens, she saw the slums. She saw people who were hungry, sick, and dying alone on the streets.
On that train ride to Darjeeling in 1946, she heard what she later called "the call within a call." It was a voice in her heart telling her to leave the safety of the convent and go live among the poorest of the poor.
This is the most inspiring part of her story: She was afraid, but she went anyway.
Imagine giving up your home, your friends, and your safety to walk into the dirtiest, saddest places on earth with only five rupees in your pocket. She traded her heavy European habit for a simple white cotton sari with three blue stripes—the cheapest cloth available. She had no hospital, no medicine, and no helpers. She simply walked onto the streets and looked for those who had been forgotten.
One day, she found a woman lying in front of a hospital, half-eaten by rats and ants, dying. The hospital refused to take her in because she was poor. Mother Teresa didn't shout or fight; she simply picked the woman up and stayed with her until she died, holding her hand so she wouldn't feel alone. She believed that no human being should die like an animal in the gutter; they should die like angels, loved and wanted.
As Mother Teresa famously said:
We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.
Her work wasn't about building giant buildings or making millions of dollars. It was about one person helping another person. Soon, her former students saw what she was doing. Inspired by her courage, they joined her. They picked up abandoning babies from dustbins; they washed the wounds of lepers that no one else would touch.
People often asked her how she could handle so much sadness and pain without giving up. They asked how she could change the world when there were so many poor people. Her answer was simple and profound. She wasn't trying to do everything; she was just trying to do the next right thing.
She taught the world that you don't need to be rich or powerful to be a hero. You just need to care.
Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.
By the time she passed away, that tiny woman from the train had built a family of thousands of sisters and brothers operating in over 130 countries. She won the Nobel Peace Prize, yet she accepted the award in the same simple sandals she wore in the slums.
So, back to the mystery of the small woman on the train: How did she become a giant of history?
She realized that the greatest disease in the world wasn't leprosy or tuberculosis; it was the feeling of being unwanted and unloved. She cured that disease, one person at a time, using the only medicine that never runs out: Love.
Mother Teresa’s story leaves us with a challenge. You don't have to go to Calcutta to find the poor. As she said:
Stay where you are. Find your own Calcutta. Find the sick, the suffering, and the lonely right there where you are.
The power she held on that train wasn't magic. It was the decision to be kind, even when it was hard. And that is a power that lives inside you, too.