every ripple counts

Today was the most epic swim meet ever. And I am going to tell you all about it.
So our opponents were these fierce, crazy people who have been swimming since they were born. We're pretty good, but they were really intense. I mean, they were tough competition. And our coach said that we had never beat them ever, in the history of our swim team. But he said we could do it tonight. And he was right.
We beat the other team by less than 10 points, and my coach was talking to us at the end and he said that when I won the 50 free (I just filled in for someone else who was lost coming from college orientation), we got 5 points. And it made me think that every person really does matter. Because I only won by out-touching the person next to me. If I didn't do that, and maybe someone else didn't put in their best effort, we could have lost, and we would have been sad.
But that's how it is. Every little millisecond counts that much. Because I could have just said, well, I'm a little tired, I'll just glide into the wall. But I remembered that in the Olympics, Sports Illustrated makes thousands of dollars on spreads of photo finishes, like Michael Phelps in the 2008 100 fly. That was epic.
But really, everything you do counts in some way, even if you think it doesn't. These blog posts are really just small pieces of the puzzle. They are really small and insignificant by themselves, but put together, it's 365 posts! And those mosaic picture things that are made up of smaller pictures (it's hard to explain).
Don't discount what you do, and don't put forth anything less than your best. Because I did my best, and thankfully it was good enough. A small win for a big win, a small ripple for a big wave.