We recently lost Ursula K. Le Guin, a writer who spent decades inspiring readers with her fantastic – and fantastically human – tales. Her voice will most certainly be missed, but I think it’s safe to say that her novels and other writings will continue to speak to readers long after she’s gone. It’s a clear example of the way in which a person’s life and what they choose to do with it can continue to resonate even after they’ve moved on. Like an ever-expanding ripple across the surface of the water, our lives will continue to have an impact on others in ways that we can hardly begin to imagine.
It’s easy to see this phenomenon at play in the case of a well-known author, whose books will survive as tangible evidence of the contributions they made, but the effect can’t be ignored in the case of any life. One way or another – in our families, in our communities, in our work, and in our acts of creativity and compassion – we’re all leaving a legacy as we pass by. Most of our names will be forgotten eventually, just as most of what we did in our lives will sooner or later be lost to all memory. Taking the long view, we’re really only here for a moment, and life as we currently understand it will go on and leave us behind, literally, in the dust – and much sooner than we might prefer to contemplate.
But the ripple still echoes outward, and onward.
A good friend of mine recently lost his mother. I didn’t know her, but I do know him, and I know that her life – now including her dying and her death – has had an impact on his life and the person he grew up to be. And it’s had me reflecting – naturally, I suppose – on my own mom’s passing in the spring of last year, thinking about the days and weeks leading up to her death, as well as the often-difficult weeks and months that have followed. There’s been plenty of suffering and grief in the time since she died, but there have also been chances to reflect on the beautiful life she lived, to be reminded of some of the lessons that she passed on to us, and to be inspired – by her memory – to live life fully while we can.
Among the many things my mom did during the last few years of her life, she helped manage arts programs for the City of Bowie, Maryland, including a local playhouse, an art gallery, and an annual scholarship for local high school seniors planning to study performing or visual arts in college. After she died, as my dad and my sisters and I began to plan the funeral, we thought it would be nice to give people the opportunity, in lieu of sending flowers, to donate to some kind of meaningful cause in her honor. We wanted to tap into that ripple effect, to provide a channel through which the joys and passions of her life could continue to flow forward and support the joys and passions of others.
We talked with the folks at the city, who graciously agreed to help organize a memorial scholarship fund. Donations could be collected on an ongoing basis, and then this coming spring, a year after her death, a scholarship would be awarded to a graduating senior with a particular passion for the arts.
It’s a fitting tribute to my mom, as anyone who knew her would agree. It may not be a huge scholarship – a few thousand dollars – but it makes me happy to think that it will help some young person pursue their education and their creative dreams.
Reflecting on all this has made me think about a passage from Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel “The Dispossessed” that I saw quoted in one of the many remembrances published after her death. It’s a lovely reflection on perspective and what it takes to recognize the fundamental beauty of life.
“If you can see a thing whole,” he said, “it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives … But close up, a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful earth is, is to see it from the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death.”
It’s easy to lose sight of the pattern when we’re still wrapped up in the midst of it. When we’re all caught up in our day-to-day concerns and troubles, we lose sight of the bigger picture, the longer view. When all the world seems “dirt and rocks,” it’s harder to sense the outward ripple of life engendering life. But the fact of the matter is that the pattern does persist, whether we’re conscious of it or not.
We are weaving a tapestry with our lives, but it is a tapestry that does not – in the end – belong to us, and one of the secrets of living well is to understand that, just as we never do the weaving all by ourselves while we’re here, the weaving itself continues after we’re gone. Each life ends, each thread reaches its terminus, but the work – and the living – goes on. Every life, at its conclusion, is both finished and unfinished. It all depends on your vantage point and perspective.
And when the pattern does start to become clear – when you begin to see how all the disparate strands interweave, interact, interconnect, and work together in support of one another and of the whole – then you can begin to feel the ripple moving, flowing in you and through you, ever outward, ever onward.
Then you can begin to see just how beautiful life really is.
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