Two months ago, on my own birthday, I certainly wouldn't have wanted any attention drawn to it. It was one of those birthdays that ends with a zero. In spite of the efforts of my rational self to convince me that a mere number should have no power over me, my irrational self insisted on "celebrating" the day with a lovely sulk. It took perverse pleasure in
listening to
words like these from the Arrogant Worms:
Happy birthday!
What have you done that matters?
Happy birthday!
You're starting to get fatter
Happy birthday!
It's downhill from now on
Try not to remind yourself
Your best years are all gone
It was especially that "What have you done that matters?" part that stuck in my head. We get so damned much cultural brainwashing about the ways we should be measuring our worth--whether it be in grades, income, weight, college degrees, awards and so forth--that sometimes it is really hard to tune all that stuff out. The truth is that we all accomplish things that are of great value, but which cannot be easily measured.
Today, in addition to being Kimmy's birthday, is also the one-year anniversary of the founding of Democracy for America. Another "birthday" of sorts, and some of the comments at Blog for America have been about as cheery as the Arrogant Worms' birthday song. What have we done that matters? Doc, how long do we have to live?
But again, some things simply can't be measured in votes, donations, endorsements, or tangible progressive victories.
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; the essential is invisible to the eye.
Those words are from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. I don't remember those words from reading them in the book, though. I remember them from a letter I received from Fred Rogers. In my "about me" page at The Village Gate, I described the letter I sent to Fred Rogers a year or so before he died, and how much it meant to me when he wrote back. It had a tremendous impact on me, but not one that can be measured. Another example of the invisible essentials, I think. Fred Rogers also mentioned this quote in an address he gave at a commencement at Marquette Universary in 2001:
Well, nobody else can live the life you live. And even though no human being is perfect, we always have the chance to bring what's unique about us to life in a redeeming way.
Beside my chair in my office is a framed piece of calligraphy with a sentence from Saint Exupery's book, The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince). It reads: "L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux." ("What is essential is invisible to the eye.") I feel the closer we get to knowing and living the truth of that sentence, the closer we get to wisdom.
What is essential about you that is invisible to the eye? And who are those who have helped you become who you are today?
Another thing that is not easily measurable is the way we can touch the lives of people we have never physically met by becoming "linked" through cyberspace. Bloggers have been in the news lately because of the tangible, measurable things some of them have accomplished. But for me, it is the connections we make that are so valuable.
I couldn't tell you when I first "met" Kimmy on Blog for America...I know that she was one of the familiar names during the Democratic primaries. But I can tell you exactly when we made an important connection. Last March, over a month after Howard Dean dropped out of the presidential race, Kimmy wrote something in the Blog for America comments and asked us all to help her get Howard to see it. I posted her words in my Live Journal, and I encouraged her to submit them as a guest entry in the Dean Leaders blog. So, on March 27, Kimmy posted an entry entitled "How Aching heartbreak, asylum style lunacy & 24 hours in the progressive community just changed me" and Howard Dean responded in the comments.
Wow. Howard Dean still didn't know me from Eve, but I was part of something. I helped make a connection. Invisible, but essential.
Then again, some things are only invisible for now, from our current perspective. We all have had moments in our lives that, in hindsight, we know were life-changing, but at the time they happened they didn't seem so important. So, in answer to the question, "What have you done that mattered?", it's too soon to tell.
Demetrius and I have a CD by Greg Tamblyn called The Grand Design. You can hear samples of some of the songs here. Below are the lyrics to the title track--I think they really speak to the idea of "connections" that I have been exploring here:
After all these years I'm starting to see
We're all threads in a tapestry
Woven together, your life and mine
'till our hearts and bones are intertwined
The road of life may lead us far
from where we all began
But sooner or later the hands of time
weave us back in to the Grand Design
Out on life's highway we feel alone
as every bend leads us further from home
Our path divides, we take our chances
and pray our loved ones will understand us
Which way to go we don't always know
so we navigate by heart
But in time we come to learn
that every road is part of the Grand Design
It's something I believe and now I find it comforts me
I've come to love the mystery
The Grand Design is with us all along
The last goodbye and newborn's song
and in the end we all belong to the Grand Design
If we could rise up high--see the whole road
how far we've come and where we'll go
See how our pathway crosses the others
We'd know how much we need each other
In this living tapestry each thread is someone's road
And one day from a higher place
We may know the Grand Design
It's something I believe and now I find it comforts me
I've come to love the mystery
The Grand Design is with us all along
The last goodbye and newborn's song
And in the end we all belong to the Grand Design
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