“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime”: Our Role in History

I have no clue how I ended up in college. I just applied to a school and went 90 minutes down the road. While there, I found community and joined bands, hoping that one day I’d make it as a musician, touring the nation and the world and becoming famous. That’s, at least, what I thought. When I had those dreams, I didn’t think about them in relation to the furture, the future that exists beyond my own mortal existence. I didn’t think about a legacy, a lasting impact on the world around me. No, I just thought about gratification for my own dreams and what I thought I wanted to do with my life. These broader thoughts about the expansive world, temporally and spatially, never even entered into my mind. As I got older, I realized that my dreams of musical stardom would never come true, but that didn’t stop me from continuing to write and record music that will last beyond my own existence.

Each of us exists within the vast expanse of the world and its history. Each of us is one speck of billions and billions who have existed before us, exist with us, and will exist long after us. When I think about this, I ask myself, “What will my legacy be?” I have no delusions that I will be someone whom people remember long after my death. I have no delusions, or really even any desire, to be known across the globe during…