The Story Of A Life

     Today I was watching a National Geographic special on Abraham Lincoln.  It covered his life, and especially his challenges and talents at facing diversity.  I have somehow always admired the man in the simplistic history books that are shoved down the throats of all students who suffer a public school education.  I say that sarcastically as I am not exactly a supporter of the way history is taught in our school systems.  Teaching history in most schools is more about dates and making good citizens than encouraging individual students to examine how we got to where we are, or if all that was done was in fact what was right.  It is in my own further readings that my true admiration of the orator and master politician that saved the experiment in democracy that we enjoy today has flowered.  If it is possible (and I believe it is) to love one you have never met, then I love Abraham Lincoln.

     My admiration is endless, and my sympathies are as almost equally boundless.  Here was a man who dealt with heartache and despair, and yet he endured.  Here was an example of humanity to be exalted.  A noble man, one we should endeavor to emulate, and yet one who suffered enough so as to still be "attainable".  In his life I can recognize the best in what humanity might be.

     So, in the TV special today they discussed President Lincolns debilitating depressions.  It was noted that at one time his closest friends actually ensured there were no sharp objects available out of concern that he might hurt himself.  Lincoln consoled them with the observation that he could not die, he felt he had as of yet done nothing "great". 

     This recognition that Lincoln wanted to do something great made me think.  Certainly he could not have seen his eventual central role in what has been the single greatest defining moment of our shared history.  And while it is obvious that he did in fact play a central and crucial role in ensuring it's outcome, he was still just a player in a larger series of events.  So I think it is safe to assume that Lincoln's desire to do something great was not exactly focused on any single situation, but just a general desire to ensure his having been significant..... IE  having lived a life worthy of note.

    So, again this left me pondering the mysteries of life.  I have often stated that I think it is at the center of every life to desire the achievement of some level of significance.  And, as I am perhaps a little past the more formative years of my life, I could not help but pose the inevitable question of myself.  Have you done anything great?  Or, more germane, have I been significant?

     Well, I certainly have not shaped the course of the worlds largest democracy.  I have not led a country through the crucible of a civil war.  I have not suffered the responsibility of sending young men into harms way.  I do not think I have ever made a decision that might have caused even a single death, much less 750,000.  In comparison my life might be insignificant...... except to some few. Still, I am keenly aware that I have shared in a multitude of loving relationships.  Oh, I would not flatter myself that anyone (not my children, nor my grandchildren, not my friends nor family) are what they are due to just whatever influence I might have directed their way.  No, I will not even go so far as to take credit for who I am (I feel the influence of so many others who shared in creating "me").  Each life is formed by the mutual efforts of both those who shared in that loved ones life, and the individual loved one themselves. 

      I am the product of my choices, and the shared experience of life and love of those individuals who have "touched" my life.   Today, a simple counting of the lives I have touched (or that have touched mine) makes me satisfied that my life has some significance.  My first thought was of grandchildren, and moved immediately to their parents.  My thoughts then moved to my children, then on to my larger family.  I have been blessed to share in loving relationships with a large family group...... and I love (and am loved) by them all.   Then, there is the larger groupings.  All those individuals that have shared this journey that constitutes my life collectively reinforce my feelings of having been significant.  I can easily see a parade of lives that have all touched mine, and in the reflection of love in each set of eyes I see my significance as plainly as if a monument to my having been important were in existence at the end of the reflecting pool in Washington DC. 

      It is with no little satisfaction that I can note the totality of my life's worth in the faces of those I love.  I imagine my significance will end when those I love are no more.  Still, I imagine the world is a better place for my having been here.  That, I think, is enough.