A very intelligent, able, enthusiastic student whom I admire very much said it to me exactly this way: “I want to make my mark on the world.”
Her words struck me as strange, even as incomprehensible, although I've heard them for seventy years. I've heard the expression many times and the sentiment is commonly held to be good, normal, healthy, a sign of good promise and respectability.
It's not clear to me what “making a mark on the world” means. It could mean putting graffiti on a wall, or putting up a building in a beautiful field where there was nothing but green grass and trees and sunshine and vistas. It could mean getting yourself a tattoo or getting your name in the news or donating money so that your name appears on a building. It could mean getting noticed by others by some outrageous dress or act. It must be related in some way to “fame,” being “famous,” recognized, like becoming President of the United States of America. It could mean bringing children into the world who “amount to something.”
But if you take a large, long, perspective on things, say of one million years, it's obvious that any “mark” on the world that one makes is going to be erased without the slightest trace left. Actually, it will take very much less time than a million years for every trace to be erased.
Now, I can't believe that something this obvious escapes my bright young student. Yet she nonetheless acts as if it were not so, as is so very commonly done.
So, why is this? Why should the goal of making a mark on the world be so resistant to correction?
My own best guess is that love is at the center of everything, including human consciousness!
