There is a certain kind of fellow who drifts through life as a leaf upon the wind, content to neither hinder nor help, and another who, like the ox, treads heavily and thoughtlessly, leaving a rut where once there was firm ground. Then there is the rare man who moves through the world with intention, as the careful gardener walks his plot—turning soil, plucking weeds, planting seeds that will bear fruit long after he has passed beyond the gate. And I ask, which of these three is truly a man?
It is no great feat to be born; nor does one deserve applause for simply existing, any more than a river deserves credit for following the valley it did not carve. But to shape the land with one’s hands, to shade another from the noonday heat with a tree he did not plant, to mend what was broken before one arrived—ah, there is the measure of a man! If he departs this place and leaves behind no more than dust, if the world is not made more orderly, more beautiful, more just for his passing, then what was he but a breath exhaled, a wave lapping at the shore only to slip back into the sea?
A squirrel does not pause to consider whether he has bettered the world; he concerns himself only with the next acorn. The crow does not wonder whether his cawing has uplifted the spirits of his brethren. But man—man alone walks upright, his eyes set not upon the ground but upon the horizon. If he possesses no greater aim than mere survival, if he asks nothing more of himself than to eat, sleep, and chatter about trifles, then has he not betrayed his station? A man should be more than a squirrel with finer clothes.
There are those who protest that the world is too vast, its ills too numerous, its nature too fixed for one pair of hands to alter its course. To such men, I say: Then do not attempt to move mountains—tend your garden instead. If you cannot lift the whole of mankind, lift one man. If you cannot end all suffering, ease the burden of a single soul. The river does not question whether its small, steady work upon the stone is of consequence, yet in time, it carves a canyon.
Some say it is enough to do no harm, that to pass through life as a ghost, touching nothing, changing nothing, is sufficient virtue. But I have not yet known the wind to move through a field without bending the grass; I have not yet seen the sun rise without casting light upon something new. The very breath in our lungs is borrowed, and if we exhale without giving warmth or movement or song, then we return to the earth no more than we have taken, and we might as well have never breathed at all.
So I say, let a man leave something behind him—a tree he has planted, a kindness he has given, a wrong he has righted. Let him depart the world not as he found it, but as his hands have shaped it. Else, he is no man, but only a shadow passing over the grass, vanishing with the setting sun.
Join us in making the world a better place – you’ll be glad that you did. Cheers friends.