What does it mean to have an impact on the world? A single drop of water impacts the mountain when it falls during the rain. Wind against the cliff grinds away at its face slowly enough that it can’t be measured in inches or millimeters but in decades. What makes a symphony? A symphony is lacking without each sit filled, but a string can never express an entire movement.
Should We Be Remembered?
They say that after 6 generations unless you have shifted the world like Atlas repositioning the earth on his back, you are all but forgotten. Anyone who knew you is long dead. The world has moved forward in your absence and the grief of your loss has become less tangible to those living than the battles waged in Middle Earth.
For someone to grieve your passing 6 generations later, we would feel more concern for someone behaving this way for someone they never knew than feel any assurance that the grief was worth the time and effort spent. No one is worth the tears of their great-great-great-great-grandchildren.
There are times when the suffering of those long passed moves us to weep. But it is for the realization that such suffering could occur; not for the one who experienced it. However, just as a choir is not a choir without each voice singing, suffering never would be without someone to whom it could latch itself to share its somber melody.
To learn of the depths of human immorality, we must dive to the ocean floor to truly understand the horrors of which we are capable. To know what we must rise above, we must know over what we build our bridges. The only way to know this is to touch it – to feel it.
But one act never moves mountains.
A cup scooped from the ocean does not rob the sea creatures of their home. No, in order to truly understand the impact of a butterfly’s wings we need to stop measuring our impact by the seconds, minutes, and hours spent in effort and instead measure in decades and centuries.
The smallest of our gestures can lead to the most remarkable crescendos for someone we will never know.
Ode to Humanity
Because the symphony of human impact is spread far and wide, responding to the echos of their fellow members for years upon years; a single note at a time. When what seems to be all of a sudden, a crescendo fractures the mantle of the earth.
And we see movement.
It was all a part of the same beautiful opus. No note could come before another, and the sound of its echo acts as the invitation to the rest of the symphony to prepare for their moments.
There is no way to know which notes we play through our lifetime will trigger the swelling of the movement in which we find ourselves. The smallest of our gestures can lead to the most remarkable crescendos for someone we will never know. Without that perceivably mindless playing of our cello, that other soul would not have heard the echo that triggered their moment to play.
Every moment of every day is a constant buzzing of noise. So loud that nothing other than numbing ourselves to the world around us seems possible at times. But the infinite symphonies playing the opus of humanity are experienced in all their glory by the energy around us and within. Like the root systems beneath a forest, something deep within us all continues to communicate. Not one pulse is memorable to the end of time.
In fact, it is best to forget them to make room for the present. However, we must never mistake memorability with necessity. Each pulse of energy in this universe is vital to the very fabric of our reality. Without one moment, reality shifts to something completely different.
It All Matters
Your title, your education, your net worth, your career… none of it matters more than the smile you give to the stranger, the hug you share with your child, or the extra minutes you spend helping to put those last nails into the framing of a house built for charity. Each of these makes its own impact on the world around us.
There is no way of knowing which of these raindrops will carve the mountain in two.
The most we can truly do is simply attempt to ensure that each impact our existence makes on earth is beneficial to those around us and those to come after us who will never know us. So don’t strive for glory. Instead strive to make the best impact you can, whenever you can.
Adam Grant wrote, “Don’t work to make your parents proud; work to make your children proud.” It’s our children, and our children’s children who will exist in the world our lives helped to build.
