Legacy...

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."
~Henry David Thoreau~

So, my therapist asked me, yet again, what it was that I was so afraid of. And I responded, once again, that my greatest fear seems to be insignificance. Weird, huh? I mean, when one believes in heaven and hell and cherubim and seraphim, or in the unending wheel of life and lives, what transpires in this one may not be a big deal. But, when your life philosophy consists of "you're born, you live, you die," things in the here and now take on a certain immediacy and relevance that is inescapable and can be a bit weighty at times. Hence my, what? Intensity? I've been accused of that trait, and think it fits...

However, my eastern teachings instruct me to live fully in the moment, and my intellect tells me this is indeed all we can do. And my recovery program tells me that the two primary motivators of any addict are fear and resentment. By definition, fears are of the future and resentments of the past, so what generates our destructive behaviors is very much a failure to live in the moment. Nah, I'm not really more complicated than anyone else. I just think too much...

The mission, of course, is to lose the ego, that artificial construct of self that is the repository for shame, fear, pride, ambition, avarice, and so forth. As we move closer to this goal, we see that we are part of something larger, and larger yet - a family, a community, a race, a species, an ecosystem, a solar system, a universe. How significant can I or anyone else expect to be in light of this realization. Crazy, huh?

So I thought I'd run off a quick inventory of significant accomplishments little old insignificant I have accomplished, to refer back to whenever I start beating on myself for living a meaningless life...

• I have two wonderful children who are my pride and joy, who seem to have absorbed what few good traits I have and precious few of the bad, which are legion. While it looks at this juncture as though they may choose not to propagate (a position I held at their ages as well), they will touch many lives during the course of theirs, and what they've learned will be passed on in ways great and small. I read somewhere recently a saying, "You don't fully die until everyone who has known you, or who has known those who knew you knew you have died." I like that thought a lot...
  
  
• I have been married for almost 30 years to a very patient woman. I have been a pretty shitty mate in a lot of ways (alcoholism not being an enhancement to any partnership), but we have managed what more than half of couples don't, and have added to each others lives more than we've taken away. I'm not proud of many of the things I've done, but am of this accomplishment and of the fact that, as husbands go, I've been a pretty damn good one...
  
  
• I've involved myself in my various communities effectively - serving on commissions and committees and as an elected official. I think now, looking back, that much of this was really driven more by ego than by a true sense of service, but I comported myself well in these instances regardless of the motivation, and enhanced the lives and efforts of those I served. Lesson - you can do the right thing for the wrong reasons.
  
  
• I've learned and taught through my actions both advocacy and the value of persistence. This has been mostly in the political arena, stretching back I now realize more than 25 years. I involved myself in local politics when my eldest was still an infant, helping chase religious proselytizers off the public school campuses, fighting developers encroaching on our private property rights, helping elect school board members, and later fighting for the rights to fair and responsible representation in partisan battles. I know that my words and actions inspired others to act, to become more involved, to establish organizations and to run for and serve in office. I have actually played a significant role in changing laws from the local to the federal level, including petition/referendum regulations here in Texas and campaign finance regulations at the federal level. And many of these accomplishments were achieved through efforts that on their face were failures...
  
  
• And many more accomplishments large and small that I've not dredged up and wouldn't bore you with anyway, today. Little helps, assists, likes and loves, lessons learned and taught and lost. One could become obsessed with taking inventory. I shan't..
  

The moral of today's saga, then, is really pretty simple. The only way one's life can have no significance is if one doesn't live it. The more we live our life, the more significant it will be. The more we interact with others, touch their lives and allow them to touch ours, the more firmly and durably enmeshed in the fabric of existence we become. I have beat myself up too much, I know, characterizing myself as a rock sitting inert on the shore of a pond. In reality, I have been a veritable handful of gravel, flinging myself (or flung by an unseen hand) to hit the surface of the pond of life in myriad spots and in varying weights and at multiple trajectories to set off more ripples and waves than I can possibly imagine. How many ripples, where they go, what they touch? These don't really matter. Its hitting the water that matters...

So, I am recommitting to my quest to abandon my ego, to live in the present moment, and to stop allowing my fears and resentments to dictate my actions. And, somehow, I am going to get my appropriately insignificant self realigned to serve for the sake of serving, to live for the sake of living, to love for the sake of loving, and to leave the seeking of fame and glory to others. All of these will be new experiences for me, and I can only do them in the present. Sounds like quite an adventure. Will keep you posted...


Oh, and, lest you worry that I spend too much time scouting around my bizzaro mind and variegated soul, I would remind you that my old friend Socrates famously said,"The unexamined life is not worth living," to which I've taken the liberty of adding, "...and the unlived life is not worth examining."

Namaste...