I have these moments in life when I think I am making a difference. I occasionally get to drive home from work feeling like I’ve had a genuinely positive effect on someone else’s life. But on my more maudlin days I remember I am one of approximately 7,000,000,000,000 people (If I have used the correct billion) which is 0.000000000000142 as a decimal, or 0.0000000000142% of the population and I am stunned by the (figurative, at least) pointlessness of my existence. You can round me as a percentage of the population to 10 decimal places and I still come up as nothing, so any difference I make effectively rounds to nothing.
So what do I do when I get in a funk like this? I start to think of things that help me adjust my perception of my social standing upwards, that’s what. Consider the barnacle. I don’t know how many there are and I don’t even care to google it. Does a barnacle have a stream of conscious thought like I do? Does it feel proud of its achievement(s)? Does it think it has really made it in the world if it has attached itself to a blue whale, say? Is its dream of retirement a nice rock in a harbour somewhere? Is there a class system in the barnacle world? Imagine the conversation. How was your day, Shelly? Wet, thanks. Tide’s out. Yup. Does a barnacle understand its position in the ecosystem? Does a barnacle have an accurate understanding of its own pathetically insignificant percentage of the barnacle population? Does a barnacle get mawkish? Maybe barnacles are happy little things, full of the joys of life and they appreciate every lap of every wave.
I feel better already. The tide has turned.
1 comment:
There's something quite beautiful and poetic about that, almost makes me wish I was a barnacle, really.
There's nothing wrong with being maudlin occasionally, I find it can be quite cathartic. And I know it sounds trite, but you DO make a big difference, and not just to me.
Keep your chin up sunshine, that's the way.
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