Butterfly wings and hurricanes (influence, that is)

As I’ve been slowly but surely catching up on the blogs that I follow (thank goodness for Google Reader–I LOVE that application!), I ran across this post today. And had to “star” it. And then sent it to a couple of my friends. And then came back to it tonight to reread it.

A snippet:

In fact, we each have the capacity to influence mankind, with our actions, dreams and beliefs. How we behave, the goals we set for ourselves and the nature of our beliefs is ours alone. We are each uniquely qualified to make a difference. Our potential influence may not be immediate but the contributions we make may have a resonance with others in another place and another time that we cannot to even begin to fathom. Van Gogh couldn’t sell his art in his lifetime. He was never to know how he was to change and influence the way man would looked at art forever.

There are those who will argue that they are ‘wounded’ or carry ‘too much baggage.’ They ‘depersonalize’ their own value or worth. Often, those people demand special treatment and special status. They want to be exempt from the rules and standards the rest of us must adhere. They demand they need not beheld accountable for their failed lives and refusal to change their dysfunctional behaviors.

Those individuals question their own worth and value- and then demand attention and sympathy. “Value me because I am worthless,” is their plea. They do not see the incongruity of their own self perceptions.

The best therapists reinforce the inherent value of their patients because it is from within that inherent value, patients will find the strength to overcome the obstacles that weigh them down and preclude them from achieving the influence, big or small, that they are capable.

Read the whole post… it’s worth it!

But why, you may ask, is this something that I feel so strongly about? I guess it’s because I’ve spent the last couple years–definitely from about 2005 on–struggling with this whole question of what meaning my life is likely to have. I’ve pondered what it is that I admire in other people and who I seek to become, and I’ve spent quite a while trying to figure out exactly what my life should be about. (This particularly in light of the fact that somewhere in there, I realized that the way I’d always pictured myself living — marriage, children, a house in the suburbs — could quite possibly never happen.) What, then, am I trying to accomplish with my life? What am I trying to achieve?

And I kept getting hung up somewhere around there. I knew the particular objectives I was striving for… I still want to write a novel at some point (assuming I will ever harness the discipline to make myself do it), I know I want to learn more languages and have some sort of role shaping how the future goes in the world of international relations (yeah, I tend to have lofty ambitions), but the why of it all never came clear to me.

But this is it — it’s about influence. It’s about having that impact on the world, nudging things by that one flap of the butterfly wings that’s going to cause a hurricane someday. While I might not ever have direct influence on children of my own, I want my life to be such that I will have influenced the direction of the future. (I hope in a good way, but heck, it might be interesting if I was the sole cause of the apocalypse, too… j/k) What’s funny is that at a visceral level, I’ve always known this is what I’m shooting for — I’ve just never had the words for it before now.