Leaving Some Traces

the author's notes from Lonely Planet

by Steven Dietz

My parents taught me that an act of kindness was its own reward. That took a while to sink in. Over time, I have begun to appreciate the depth of their wisdom. I though of this recently while doing research for a new play I'm writing about Joyce Cheeka, a young Squaxin Indian girl growing up in the Pacific Northwest in the '20s. One phrase from the teachings of her elders keeps coming up again and again: be useful.

In the midst of a world that is too big and too fast, a world where information rules like a dictator and news travels like a virus, it is easy to be overcome by the hopelessness of the world and the helplessness of we, its keepers. What impact can we hope to have? What traces will we leave behind?

History, I believe, is not the story of grand acts and masterpieces. History instead, is the inexorable accumulation of tiny events -- footsteps and glances, hands in soil, broken promises, bursts of laughter, weapons and wounds, hand touching hair, the art of conversation and the rage of loss. Historians may focus on the famous, familiar names --- but history itself is made, day after day, by all those whose names are never known; all those who never made a proclamation or held an office, those who were handed a place on Earth and quietly made a life out of it.

So, what do we affect during our lifetime?  What, ultimately, is our legacy? I believe, in most cases, our legacy is our friends.  We write our history onto them, and they walk with us through our days like time capsules, filled with our mutual past; the fragments of our hearts and minds. Our friends get our uncensored questions and our yet-to-be-reasoned opinions. Our friends grant us the chance to make our grand, embarrassing, contradictory pronouncements about the world. They get the very best, and are stuck with the absolute worst we have to offer.  Our friends get our rough drafts. Over time, they will both open our eyes and break our hearts.

Emerson wrote, "Make yourself necessary to someone." In a chaotic world, friendship is the most elegant, the most lasting way to be useful.  We are, each of us, a living testament to our friends' compassion and tolerance, humor and wisdom, patience and grit.  Friendship, not technology, is the only thing capable of showing us the enormity of the world.