So, I received some news last week and it is... interesting.
As I have stated here before, in my opinion, and in my life, without any validation of one's efforts or intentions, a person will become convinced that they have had no effect on reality at all. Which can add to one's mental state, since some professions and some 'life callings' pretty much require that for progress and for acceptance that one has done something good and positive in the world. (Which is what we all should be doing, to be honest... doing good and positive things in the word.) When one is trying to do this, and yet one never sees any results or even hears that anything they have done amounts to any progress, change, or enlightenment... well, that tends to create either people like myself, or people like Stephen Paddock ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Las_Vegas_shooting ).
So, last week a friend was talking about his friend (whom I knew through that first friend, but we were not 'friends' ourselves) who had passed away a few weeks before. (There is evidence that his employer, upon hearing his complaints about gut pains and so on, decided that just taking him home would be good enough. The man died in his house and no one found him for four days. There are official inquiries being made about this.) The guy who had passed was someone who considered themselves 'Christian', and followed those doctrines as devoutly as he could. Such a person is usually known to be... shall we say... anti-gay. And, this guy was no exception. Not that he was one of those rabid people who obsess over other's lives because their own is so pathetic, but he believed.
So, my friend tells me that, a while before he died, the guy admitted to him that he was always one to believe that homosexuality was a sin, and that those who live that life are going to hell and that they are 'wicked' and so on. Bear in mind, of course, that he did not know any LGBTQA+ persons. Then, he met me about twenty-five years ago. I was not living in the area, so it was during visits to my friend that we got to hang out. This dude tells my friend that, he had always believed what he was told about people like myself and had never questioned it. But, after hanging out with me over the years, he had decided that maybe what he had been told was not accurate. He told my friend that he had changed his outlook on the topic because he did not see in me what those preachers had been telling him for decades. This caused him to question what they had been telling him.
So, it seems that I have done one thing good and positive. This knowledge helps me. That is the thing that people don't seem to understand about what I have been saying. I help others all the time and never see what becomes of it. But, knowing that something I did had an effect and had a tangible result... well, that helps me deal with my failures and desire to stop wasting everyone's time with my continued existence. It has an effect. Knowing this also has an effect, one that needs to be felt more often. Now, I get to feel it and it will help me (maybe, I think I am too far gone, but we will see).
It is nice to know that I got at least one thing right after 62 years on this fucking blue marble.
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have you done that helped or influenced people that you don't know about? Because more often than not our effect on others goes unnoticed or undiscovered by us. Maybe you taught someone something, or played some music that someone loved, or you did a small favor that turned into something significant, but you never saw the results and assumed it made no difference. But we all leave fingerprints on other peoples' lives whether we know it or not. You can pass through the lives of others assuming they never noticed you, or cared, and it's easy to make that assumption because your influence might not manifest for a long time, or you might never see it at all. It's the lack of feedback that's discouraging, but you can be sure your fingerprints are on the universe.
But, that does not help me with my issues. Which is what I am trying to address.
Yes, we do things all of the time that we never know what effect they have.
But, when one is trying for an effect, trying to do something that normally would generate a response, and never getting one... well...
Let me put it this way. If you started a business and that business was your only way to live, and no one ever even came into the store, much less bought something... but everyone said it was a neat store... what would your response be to that?
Try again? Like I have not done that. Choose another profession? Why should I give up my dream when I was told that we could live our dreams? Was I lied to? (Don't answer, that last one was rhetorical.) Would you just sit back and rest on the laurel that you had an effect on the community, even if it was not the one you wanted? How would one even do that when one can see that no one listened and no one cared enough to even consider what I was saying?
I used to have to listen to people talk about my desire to 'get rich quick' and 'do nothing but get something' in regards to my career as a performer. That was because they only went by the performers on the TV and in the movies. They set the parameters for our society and how it determines both success and impact. According to those parameters, I have done nothing.
What else can I go on to counter that evidence, other than having proof that I did do something? I mean, 'faith' has done nothing but let me down, so I am not going to go that route again.
I think it’s common for moderately ambitious people to want and have expectations to do things that have positive impact on the world. But really, very few will ever have a large impact. And for some of us, I expect it’s hard to come to terms that our lives will not have much influence on the world writ large. I’ve certainly struggled with that.
The little things matter a lot, however. Just being nice to others makes a difference. If your exchange with someone brings a ray of sunshine into his or her life for even just a moment, you’ve done good. And I’m willing to bet that you have done that many many times over the years.
Thanks for being you!
I was sort of brooding the other day about the sad likelihood that when I'm gone, not a lot of people will miss me. I'm old - and when you're old you start disappearing gradually even before you're actually gone - so I don't have a lot of family left and my circle of friends, never large, is now quite small. I expect that my funeral (which I hope will not occur any time soon) will be sparsely attended, and even if I end up reincarnated or hanging out with Jesus, before long almost everyone in this universe will have forgotten me. However, the upside of this rather maudlin prediction is that a few people will be at least a little sad for awhile. What will definitely not happen is millions of people celebrating my departure, or yours. Multitudes won't be buying champagne and attending parties and dancing in the streets because we're gone. While our impact on the universe might not have been newsworthy, we can at least feel assured that whatever it was, was positive and good, unlike someone I can think of. It's definitely better to have been obscurely decent than famously horrible.
