mark

A lot of the time I find myself looking back upon my reflections and realizing that I can be quite an existentialist. I find myself completely disoriented with the ways of the world and struggle quite often to make my mark in a manner that will be understood. That's a really vague way of putting it. One dimension of this includes this view of meaning I hold. I find other people generally say things more eloquently than I do; I really felt close to this author's words when I read them:

"I can not 'make my mark' for all time - those concepts are mutually exclusive. 'Lasting effect' is a self-contradictory term. Meaning does not exist in the future and neither do I. Nothing will have meaning 'ultimately'. Nothing will even mean tomorrow what it did today. Meaning changes with the context. My meaningfulness is here. It is enough that I am of value to someone today. It is enough that I make a difference now."

Whilst I don't believe you can't be meaningful for a short period of time, I do believe this crisis that Hugh Prather faces, that we struggle to make our mark on a world that will never remember us. A lot of that scares me, but it seems to be quite important that when you get frightened by the big picture, sometimes it's good to think narrowly, if only to escape for a second and realize that people do find you interesting. At least today.