Do you feel unimportant as one person in a large group?

It's easy to feel overwhelmed by numbers, and I'm not talking about sports statistics.

Statistics overwhelm in other ways.

I mean numbers in general.

You feel overwhelmed if you're battling a large crowd in any venue.

I remember how tiny I felt walking in and then out of the Rose Bowl many years ago as more than 100,000 fans joined me for the football game between Ohio State and USC.

At the time, this wasn't a stadium with great access routes in and out, and you almost felt like you didn't have to walk to get anywhere. You could just be carried along by the pushing and shoving of the mass of humanity.

A person also feels overwhelmed on the expressway. Anybody who drives to or from Chicago during the rush hour knows something about numbers.

In fact, anyone who drives anywhere in the Chicago area at almost any time understands numbers.

When I was heading home from 26th and California one day after waiting until 5 p.m. to see if I was going to be picked as a juror for a murder trial, I got caught in a massive traffic jam. It took me longer than two hours to get home.

I was just one car in a sea of cars, one frustrated citizen, and it's easy to feel very insignificant.

What can you do short of showing some road rage, and that's not a good idea if you value your life? You just sit there and creep along in your car, feeling totally helpless and very upset.

Don't feel bad. Everybody feels that way at some time even out of their car. We're human, that's why. I am confident many of our high school athletes feel insignificant at times and overwhelmed by pressures and demands of school and sports and everything else that makes up their day.

No matter what the circumstances are in your life, you never want to fall into the trap of perceiving yourself as unimportant.

You are important. We're all important.

You do make a difference. Don't ever forget that.

As you may have heard, there's a national election coming up in a month.

If you're of voting age, it might be very easy to skip an election because you feel your single vote can't change anything. You're only one person.

In a remarkable turn of events, the result of the presidential election comes down to one man's vote in the recent movie "Swing Vote" with Kevin Costner.

The movie "Election" centers around a class presidency election between the ruthless overachiever and the athlete. The overachiever wins by one vote because the athlete decides it wouldn't be fair for him to vote for himself and votes for ruthless.

Yes, those are just movies, but Thomas Jefferson was elected president by one vote in the electoral college. So was John Quincy Adams. Rutherford B. Hayes' election was debated and then referred to an electoral commission where it was decided by a single vote.

Andrew Johnson, the successor as president to Abraham Lincoln, escaped impeachment by one vote.

California, Idaho, Washington, Texas and Oregon gained statehood by one vote.

You get the idea.

The easy thing is to just shrug your shoulders and give up, saying you are just one person and you can't make any difference. You do make a difference with that approach, but it's a negative one.

You should go through each day as a high school student with the feeling that what you do today will have an effect tomorrow and in the future.

Don't you want to make this world a better place for everyone? If you don't, something's wrong.

I think it's true that the only way to get anywhere in this world is to know someone important.

You have to know yourself.

You have to know what you can do and then try to do your best in every situation.

You should never forget that you do make a difference, and that difference is you.

bfrisk@dailyherald.com