Ripples & Waves

On the day of the last high school football game of the year, the marching band kids would throw a party for all the people who were graduating or moving away. Every person who was off to somewhere new would have to stand up in front of 200+ kids and a handful of adults to address the room. In front of everyone who had known us since the start of that season of life, we had to answer one simple question:

How do you want to be remembered when you die?

Over the years, you hear different answers, but they all felt the same.

“I want to be remembered as kind."

“I want to be remembered as smart.”

“I want to be remembered as strong.”

“I want to be remembered as successful.”

“I want to do something great and leave a legacy of that greatness behind.”

I want to be remembered.

Each person had their own niche. They all had some story to tell about who they hoped to be until their last breath. All different, but all feeling the same.

For the four years of high school, I thought about what I would say when I got up there. How did I want to be remembered? What did I want to do until that final moment that would make me worth remembering? How great, how successful, how fulfilled did I want to be?

I don’t remember the moment my brain decided to say what I was going to say, but it definitely took most of those four years to come to this conclusion. I think I remember wanting to be different, but mostly I remember wanting to be honest. When it was finally my turn on that big day for marching band kids everywhere, I walked up in front of all these people who thought they knew me and spoke:

“I don’t care if I’m remembered when I die. The world is an ocean and I can only be a drop. I hope my ripples reach people and touch people and make them feel good. As long as I affected people in a positive way, I think that’s enough. They don’t have to remember the good and attach my name to it. I just hope the good is there, spreading.”

…or something along those lines.

I remember being told that I hadn’t done the exercise correctly. That I had missed the point. But when I remember that moment, having thought for years about how I would answer the question now, I think I got it right.

In the end, it’s all stardust, isn’t it?

When we die, other people will keep on living. No matter how big our names become, no matter how remembered we are for however long, we’ll always be forgotten. Eventually, the universe won’t remember our names, your faces, or your blueprints.

But in the meantime, while we cling to this world with white knuckles, we could spend our lives rippling love and goodness through the vast ocean of humanity. Ripple after ripple could cause wave after wave and every drop touched by those ripples and waves could keep the whole thing going.

Nothing lasts, everything ends, but in the meantime we could float in the ripples and the waves and make it feel like a nicer place for the next one

and the next one

until there is no one left.

When we die, why should we care for the thoughts of the living? But as we live, I suppose we should care about the feeling of the water on our skin.