For many people, the really big, important choices they make are evident in their own lifetime. Having a child, starting a business, winning a war; these things are actions with directly apparent outcomes. Our modern world has made such results more tangible and readily dissipated. If you do something obviously important, word will get out!
There’s a flipside to this scenario, though. Some people go their whole lives without feeling like they’ve affected anything of genuine measure. They debate their own existence, never seeming to find a purpose for living. Vincent Van Gogh died believing his art was a waste. Franz Kafka wanted his writings totally burned upon his death, thinking he’d written disgusting nonsense. Johann Sebastian Bach died while considered a near-invisible footnote in the history of great composers, known mostly as a local German specialist to test out new organs upon installation.
Let that sink in for a moment – Van Gogh, Kafka, and Bach all shuffled off this mortal coil thinking they produced nothing of merit. How simultaneously incredible and deeply depressing!
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| Irises by Vincent Van Gogh |
We can’t know how or why, but there are people alive today that will unfortunately never see the mark they make upon the world. The nature of the universe functions without any regard for fairness. And yet, the lives of these people are so wildly important. A young child might write a poem that pushes some future soldier to carry on for one more day, thereby saving countless other people in the process. Perhaps an old retiree with no family wills their entire estate to a charity that finally finds the cure for cancer many decades after their own death. A college student could compose the sweetest of all songs ever written, only for it to be hidden on a thumb drive in a shoe box for a hundred years, never to be heard by anyone even born yet.
The takeaway is this – the small and quiet things we do today are perhaps the most important choices of all. The things without fanfare, without notoriety, without celebration; these are the things that can change the world. Though you may feel like what you do has no merit and you walk the world without purpose, there is a much greater promise of hope. The sheer magnanimous importance of you being here on this Earth cannot be understated.
You may have been made to help people who aren’t born yet.
And so, as bleak as your short season might be, the seeds you plant today could grow into a tree that shades a weary soul tomorrow. A friend you’ll never meet will thank you despite not knowing who you are or why you were here. Is there anything more sincere than that?
