Consider these words from John Gardner (1912-2002), founder of Common Cause.
Meaning is not something that you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success and failure is of less account.
In a speech that you can read here in full, Gardner told how a man had written to him from Colorado, saying that his twenty-year-old daughter had been killed recently in a car accident. At the time of her death, this paragraph of Gardner’s was in her billfold.
The letter writer expressed his gratitude. The fact that his daughter had kept these words close to her had revealed something about her values and concerns that he might not otherwise have known.
All of which is to say, my friend—you and I never know how the words we say might be carried by others.
(My thanks to the late John Gardner, via Rod McIver and this post at Heron Dance Art Journal.)
The Gentle Nudge
Join other Rafters this week for . . .
WEDNESDAY: Creatives’ Coffee (Zoom, 4:00-5:00PM Central, at this link)
THURSDAY: Poetry Pick-Me-Up (Zoom, 12:00-1:00PM Central, at this link)
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Thank you for this...words are indeed such carriers of feeling and intent, but the listener must also be open to them. This is often my prayer, that I be like a field ready to be planted. (Can you tell that I yearn for Spring???)
I was so struck by this quote that I went to Gardener’s speech and read part of it. They were helpful words as I sat this morning pondering boredom and accomplishment- where I was and where I might be going. I am still dealing with an unexpected end to my ministry and where I go from here. I was also pondering the various creative paths I like to follow and where, if anywhere, I want to go with them. Gardener’s words give me hope that I can fashion something and that it’s okay that it is for myself and not always others.