Impact: What We Leave Behind
I’ve always loved graveyards, they are a moment of past lives, frozen in memory. They are a place where life meets death. They are a mark left behind by strangers you never knew and now, as you stand before their resting place, you think:
What was your life like?
What did you see?
What did you do?
I’d liked to have known you.
Recently, I had cause to appreciate my own, living impact and contemplate too, just what would I leave behind, would I be content to leave behind as my own footprints in the sand?
I’m an introvert, I don’t make friends easily, I don’t seek to socialize (and it takes a long time before even I am gasping for an evening or day out with people) and work is work, I do my job well, I am friendly but don’t spend it chatting about weather, weekend events or the traffic with colleagues. I’m highly independent. I was raised to work-hard, not expect handouts and strive to be my best possible self at all times. I grew up shy; surrounded by drama queens and high achievers who won every award and special treatments available (and if they weren’t they were made just for those people). Being was the shadow was normal and it remains so.
I don’t expect to be noticed, to be thanked, to be supported or helped.
This weekend I hit the milestone of living in Victoria for a year and at the same time I finished a year of contract work with the high school that had prompted me to move back out here in the first place. I also don’t mark occasions as much other than a series of checklists. Just another thing accomplished to my best ability, just another year. What’s a milestone but an excuse for people to eat sugar, drink alcohol, “party” or do something else that they wouldn’t necessarily do on a daily basis. I make every day count. If I want chocolate on a Tuesday, I will have chocolate. If I want nachos, on a Sunday, I will have nachos. I have tried to mark milestones by getting beers on a Friday and do that “Friday drinks” thing but it feels too much like following the crowd, “just because.”
I’m happy curling under a blanket and watching a film whenever I want to watch a film. Reading when I want to read, getting a fancy coffee at Starbucks when I want a fancy coffee. Milestones are many in our lifetimes and they don’t need the flags and confetti, the shout-outs and the excess spending. Just do things when you want to do things. Acknowledge you did something yes but it doesn’t need to be a party (unless that gives you energy and you love planning that sort of thing). On the other hand, don’t feel depressed if your birthday lands on a Wednesday and you can’t do anything other than think yourself “happy birthday me!”
I’ve had a few of those. It’s just another day, another year. If you’re living fully your milestones are every single day you wake up and you greet the morning.
So, with that viewpoint, I went in to my last day at the school. I finished the admin needing to be done and had gone to the office to hand in my keys and other files when the secretary who has always had a strange liking toward me (after I taught her son in my Grade 12 class during my first semester there) exclaimed, “I’m so glad you’re here! We were starting to talk about sharing around the cake if you weren’t down by 4 today!”
I looked on bemused.
“You’ve got gifts! A student left you cake and we’ve got some things for you too.”
My brain short-circuited. Reflecting back I probably looked halfway between a gaping fish and a rebooting laptop. Eventually I said,
“For me? Me?”
I was bemused. Why would anyone there get me anything? How did they even know I was leaving? Well, it’s on the records sure, but who care?
They noticed I was leaving. They cared.
Oh.
Somehow, inexplicably. I had made an impact. I couldn’t stop thanking them after that point and sent an email to the student who had left me cake. I had gone in, done my job to my best ability and was now leaving and people noticed.
I’m used to being a shadow. I seek out shadows. I don’t mind being hidden. But I’m still human. I still chase the dream of being seen as important, being noticed, being wanted, being loved.
I’m all those things but sometimes, it’s easy to forget that for all milestones are as constructed as a three layer cake, they do matter and not only the people you meet in your travels matter but you matter.
We all make an impact.
Impact: We Want to Be Remembered
We won’t all be JK Rowling or Martin Luther King Jr. We won’t be Buddha or Oprah. We won’t be Robin Hood or King Arthur either.
But we will be. We will have been. We can be.
Happiness and feeling like we reached out potential, our purpose and made maximum impact does not mean we need to have any level of fame, whether it’s enough to end up in Guinness World Records, Wikipedia or a Hall of Fame. Nor is it winning the Hugo Award, an Oscar or the Nobel Peace Prize.
Happiness comes from the little things. Like saying, “I want chocolate,” and then sitting down to savour it. Letting each bite melt in your mouth and appreciating the fact that you can have chocolate.
Happiness comes giving it to others. A comment here, there and a listening ear. Remembering that people are you too. They worry, they laugh, the wish and they want. They struggle, they stand tall, they put one foot in front of the other; they leave footprints in the sand.
If anyone has ever given you a compliment, ever smiled at you; you’ve made an impact.
There are enough people in the world, that every footprint you make that passes by someone else, you’ve made an impact. That’s a lot of impact on the world if you count how many people are in it. If enough “small” lives, “regular” lives walk with love and pride for the things they do, then the course of human future can change.
If everyone said, “good morning,” to one person they passed, then one day, everyone would have been told “good morning,” at least once in their life.
Think about if we all did something even bigger than that?
Lived as green as possible, celebrated genders, race and made space for all those differences in the languages we walk with, the walk our societies make through history will change at a greater rate.
I Remember
I remember the hand offered to me on a kindergarten playground.
I remember the hugs received after being away for a long time.
I remember the prickle of tiny crabs over my hand.
I remember the crash of waves under Beethoven’s Fir Elise.
I remember hot chocolate waiting after a winter bluster.
I remember fish and chips on another seashore.
I remember so much it would never fit a bookshelf, not even in the famed, ancient Library of Alexandria itself.
Over a lifetime, the things we remember best are often the things which seemed small, mundane or even ridiculous. (Like Great Yarmouth in the UK).
But those, all together, make up you. Each moment you live and how you chose to live it, no matter what anyone else, society or history says: Those moments are you. I wrote a little about that a few years ago, in appreciation of a little known, short, sweet but impactful radio drama called Cabin Pressure in The Point of You.
Impact: When All is Said and Done
At the end of a life, most people, when asked what they regret the most, or wish they had done more of; they say a combination of the following:
“I wish I had appreciated life more.”
Be it family, friends, experiences. Instead of chasing the next certificate, the next award, the next accolade, chase the sunrise and the sunset. Chase those vegetables with family, share chocolate with yourself and a good song, chase the passion for painting in between the satisfaction of a balanced bank account and another 9 to 5 done.
Whatever you believe, we all will end up in the same state in the end so while you leave footprints in the sand, remember, even the smallest person can change the course of the future.
Do something small this week. Treat it like a milestone; glittering, great and as vast as the mountains and the sea. We are children of this earth, from the smallest blade of grass to the highest snowflake which falls to Everest.
Count those footprints you leave in the sand. You have put down another step. Now put down another. You are living.
