You Must Justify Why You Are On This Earth

In the Academy Award nominated documentary Virunga, Andre Bauma, caretaker at Virunga National Park and pictured below, says something that hit me pretty hard the first time I heard him utter the words, and I've thought about it often since: "You must justify why you are on this earth." Whoa. And amen. A thousand times amen.

THEN (and seemingly unrelated this is stream of consciousness after all) over the most recent July 4 holiday I decided to go to Arlington National Cemetery (side note: I went to Section 60 where the most recent casualties of war are laid to rest. I absolutely advocate for all to visit. It was sobering and a necessary experience in humility and patriotism.) But as I was walking (I was alone) an older couple stopped me and asked me if I'm reading anything particularly great right now. Ummmm are your names Big and Brother how do you know my life? (Shortly thereafter I realized I was wearing my "So Many Books So Little Time" t-shirt from Politics and Prose.) So once I got beyond that initial confusion, we talked for a brief moment about the fact that, why yes I am. A World War I memoir, as it happened. That was basically the conversation. Truly. And yet it was awesome. Truly. I smiled as we parted ways and even rubber necked it to look back at the pair and declare (to myself): those are some cool humans.

THEN (off-roading it again I swear this all ties together), one of my favorite talks ever is Elder Holland's Are We Not All Beggars. However, I think that talk has largely been interpreted as "see as long as I'm doing what I can that's enough." So I'm not an authority (let alone a GENERAL authority #seewhatididthere) on what Elder Holland meant, but I interpreted the talk as saying "do what you can and that is enough, but are you REALLY doing all that you can." In other words, do more. There are lots of dramatic ways to do more. But one of the easiest is kindness, like that which was shown to me at the Cemetery. It is humbling to think about how simple that couple's act towards me was, and yet how uncommon.

THEN (last time pinky promise) when I graduated college I shared the impact a few commencement speeches from famous authors had had on me when I read them. Naturally, one of my favorites was turned into a book, and naturally, my sweet mom bought it for me as a graduation present. The title: Congratulations, By the Way. In other words, congratulations, as an afterthought. The speaker, author George Saunders, centered his talk on how his greatest regrets in life were his failures of kindness. And his advice was essentially this: yeah you graduated, but so what? What really matters is what's ahead, and how you deal with it. Specifically, what really matters is that you are kind.

So in light of the example of kindness that was shown to me in Arlington, which I've thought of numerous times since, and recognizing that I am NOT doing all that I can, especially when it comes to something as simple as kindness, and with George Saunders' deeply personal warning not to fail at kindness, I have come to the realization that one of the greatest justifications of why we are on this earth is manifested in our conscious decisions to demonstrate kindness. I'm hoping to be better at it, so if you interact with me and notice I'm not up to par I give you permission to (unkindly) smack me. Thanks in advance.

"Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears." - Stephen Foster

#ConsiderTheLilies #AreWeNotAllBeggars #ButAlsoHope