During the week, much to my horror, I was assaulted by the words of a very dear friend. This hitherto wonderfully sane individual casually mentioned a belief that life is meaningless and noted the absurdity of folk devoting so much time to various tasks and activities, when we make very little difference and nothing matters.
The words “red rag” and “to a bull” have never before been so apt.
I enclose an extract of my response.
“I needed to sleep a little before I could respond to your third para, and I am ready to write about it now. I am sorry, but I disagree with it vehemently, and reject it as hopelessly negative, reprehensibly ignorant and completely untrue. It is not worthy of you – or, at least, it is not worthy of the person I hope and believe that you are.
Whilst I agree that some people may be driven by a negative and misplaced sense of duty, I do not believe that to be the case for most people. I do not believe that many people are driven by anything other than selfish desire of one sort or another. Some folk do spend hours obsessing about work in a negative pattern of naked ambition and insatiable desire for wealth but, again, I believe that only applies to a minority of the population. Naked, unadulterated greed afflicts a much larger percentage of the population than does a destructively negative sense of duty or, indeed, a desire to work to acquire the objects and status of what is desired.
Responsibility, duty, selflessness, a passion for truth, righteousness, a hunger and thirst for justice, love, faith and hope – these are all qualities which many, many people have in abundance – and which motivate (and, yes, occasionally drive) them to excesses of the most wonderful kinds. People may be spiritually numb, switched off, closed or observant, but they are not morally bankrupt, so can – and many do – lead lives of great worth, purpose and fulfilment. Individuals can and DO make enormous, incredible and wholly positive contributions (and therefore, a difference) to the situations, welfare and lives of others. Absolutely everyone can and does make a difference – whether that difference is positive or negative is a personal choice.
It is a preposterous lie that “in the grand scheme of things, little any of us do really matters at all” and it really angers me that you would say that. It is a facile, egregious and stupid comment.
Did the holocaust, apartheid, various acts of genocide etc…, and the perpetrators of those barbaric acts not make a difference or matter at all? Would the world be the same if they had never existed? Those who prey on the weak, the vulnerable, the lost – do they not make a difference? Do they not matter at all?
One kind act to a fellow human being makes all the difference in the world if it means that individual will stand a little taller, hold their head a little higher and will step out into the world one pace further. In Maya Angelou’s “Still, I Rise”, one of the last lines declares, “I am the dream and the hope of the slave”. For me, that is true. Back in the day, when life was tough – and the self-indulgent, half baked ideas of the chattering classes were confined to an environment where they served to fester and poison the minds of their indolent originators, without polluting the rest of us – my ancestors were bred like animals, treated like property, forbidden to marry, branded and ringed. Still, they made a difference. That they survived made ALL the difference; it mattered then, and it matters now.
Those individuals, in Ireland, who stood – even when they were on their knees – to defy the relentless, merciless, murderous attitudes of English landlords who left them to die during the potato famine, mattered and made a difference. They made a difference when they lived, they made a difference when they died. Those who emigrated, names known or unknown, took their honest accounts and their vision for a better world with them, and made a better world. Since time immemorial, there have been individuals, groups, tribes, collections of people (think of the villagers of Eyam) who have done their best and that has mattered and made all the difference.
You have made a difference and you are making a difference every day. What you do, what you portray, what you declare matters enormously.”
Be at peace.
