As my last full day of y old life draws to a close, it’s just so easy to reflect upon all that has happened which has managed to get me right here from where I began. I won’t say from where I began, for it’s an arbitrary line, but for those who just can’t let it go why don’t we say the period beginning on June 11th, 2007 and running until right now. I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out the fallacy that is both beginnings and ends; thanks to the continuity of our experience I can no more say I’m done with the past or have divided the now from the future than I can say that my wallet has been married for the last 10 years to its life mate Lee, Massachusetts.
That’s not to say that today has been in way humdrum. Today was a day of firsts – the first last full day at a job I was quitting, the first work lunch in my honor, the first company gathering to wish me well. It was my first farewell speech, excluding the end of High School or National Young Leaders Conferences, and more importantly the first lucid moment since I can remember where I understood so greatly and so clearly the effect that a little bundle of atoms like myself can have on the world. I’ll toot my own horn (or “Punch the Clown” as I heard on TV recently) some other time because the whole situation and the prime understanding have little to do with me other than my outstanding ability to do be myself and be willing to suffer both the glory and consequence for it. The important idea is just how much we shape the world and the people in it when we aren’t paying attention.
All of the trials and tribulations, all the days spent metaphorically banging my head against all the walls of my cube and all the windows I couldn’t see. All the terse and blandly vitriolic interactions with a detractor whose motives I could never understand. The eyestrain, the tired nights on the couch, the frustrated rumblings of ideals in a cage, the dead ends and dead-bolted doors of opportunity, they were all worth it. Why? Little had I realized that to a far greater crowd than I had infuriated, I had inspired.
Like infinity and overcoats, inspiration comes in different sizes, and every reply slowly blew all of the fuses in my mind. From “I’m so happy for you, words cannot describe,” “I’ll miss you” to “Why are you leaving me, you were the only one I could...with, asshole” to “I feel like I’m losing my best friend,” and “I simply don’t feel like I’m understood here, but you did.” There were other comments sure, some delivered with all sincerity yet limited by their perfunctory banality, and I’m sure that some would rather thank me for my time by bludgeoning me with the heaviest thickest product we sell, but this was me. For better (mostly) or for worse it was my life, the one in which I take all my faults out on myself tenfold, the existence that recently has been preoccupied with the wake of destruction it has at times caused, the being whose ego, when it flares, worries that it’s not good enough to live up to the expectations that have been set.
Beware of veiled images and half the story, to be sure. Mostly unbeknownst to me, I had also been up to some good. I had been mostly kind, and it turns out that stubborn refusal to accept anything less than the world as I see it was a reminder that there was some still some faculty, function and efficacy to those who took the less common route in reply to a wise quote by a wise man (a painter, Doug. Talk to the painters if you get a chance, they’ve had a long time to get some thinking done), “When faced with that which we don’t like we have two options, to change reality or change ourselves.” There is intense wisdom in being able to roll with the punches in the same way that the lake rolls with its waves, and further profundity locked in the notion that we can change reality.
We can change reality, and if fact we do so with every waking moment, every decision. It was in the moments that I hadn’t earmarked as weighty, a smile here, a conversation there, a joke when it’s needed or a bit of unintentional sympathy. It has to be, because as I initially added up the sum of my moments, I couldn’t come to any whole greater than the sum of its parts. Perhaps that’s the idea: those thoughtless minutes, the ones which act as filler for the punctuated peaks, are truly as important as the ones destined for the memory books, what we do when we put ourselves on autopilot and live according the script that we have written to carry ourselves from day to new day. We aren’t fully aware, yet we get no breather from perception and change, we live on the whole unconsciously yet this spottily conscious life leaves a permanent imprint on both the awareness and ignorance of everyone we come into contact with.
It seems like a grave responsibility, and it is, but it’s underpinnings of our ability to be the change we wish to see in the world make for such hope for both ourselves and others, our present and future that we must pay mind. If we can shape someone’s world so, then we are never powerless – we are changing matter everyday, matter which contains more energy in each atom’s nucleus alone then the stars in the sky. We are constantly shaping and being shaped and reshaping in turn, and it is from this that we can hopefully understand that since every moment has equal potential, that this moment could be the one that alters someone else forever, isn’t this a perfect e moment to start over? While each person consciously grabs the reins of their lives at different times, reforming their perceptions dreams and actions, remembering that like it or not we are already and always at work shaping the future with every thought. I can only hope that this will encourage right now as the moment to live as though we are already the person that we wish to be; you never know who may be picking up your signals.
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