What Is Worth Doing?
I’m in my happy place – walking alone through the Keystone Mall. I like the size, the light, the smell of the place. The high end clothes I can’t afford and wouldn’t wear. I like the way my Converses feel on the floor; they don’t want to walk – they want to dance. I always dress up when I go to the mall, and I feel proud and happy as if I’m a part of something special.
But this is quickly followed by the realization that there is no one to witness this. No paparazzi crowding me, no “steal his street style” posts the next day. Lily-Rose Depp and Alana Champion smoking outside a cafe in New York. Theirs is a charmed life wrapped in significance – the new Bohemia, a freshman generation of degenerate beauty queens.* Their set is the 1950s Beat Generation, Warhol’s Factory, Dylan’s folk scene. They are the place to be.
My life and experience are far less meaningful in comparison. I’m not captured in film or print, preserved in time to be viewed by millions. I am alone, and no one will see or remember. I might as well not be here at all. What’s the point of a tree falling in the forest if no one witnesses its crash?
(Set aside for a moment the obvious self-involvement; the exaggeration of my importance and the illusion that my style is worth stealing or image worth preserving.)
This is the old “If you don’t post it, it didn’t happen” idea; that exposure – or the awareness and approval of others – equals value and meaning. Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson; we know them and we praise them, not because of what they did as such, but because they were famous for having done it. They were bums, but in the significant sense, so that makes it alright. We admire Kerouac, but who would admire their good-for-nothing nephew who goes and does likewise? Fame is the all-forgiving virtue.
The idea that exposure equals value (and conversely anonymity is meaningless) feels true, but falls apart upon inspection. Because how many people have to witness a thing before meaning is bestowed? What is the tipping point at which enough people see, praise, or consume something before it becomes worthwhile? Even if there is a crowd of witnesses, they will die too. If everyone dies who saw the tree fall, the significance their witness bestowed dies with them.
We use results as justification for whether or not something is worthwhile, but results are largely beyond our control. We can play the hand we’ve been dealt to the best of our ability, but whether or not it’s the winning hand is anyone’s guess. We should not judge ourselves or others based on the cards we’ve been dealt or whether or not we win the round, but on how we play the game. Better to run a small, barely-solvent general store and take care of one’s employees than to be Jeff Bezos.
The question is not, “How do I succeed like So-and-So?” but “Is what I do worth doing whether it succeeds or not?” Our talents and skills, beauty and fashion sense, dreams and plans, words, art, relationships, the creation of our hands and the work of our lives… is this worth doing even if no one stands in witness, no one cares, no one applauds?
I care so deeply about the outcome of what I do. I crave fame because it’s the all-forgiving virtue, and I need forgiveness. I know the outcome I want to the things I do, but outcome is out of my hands. All I ever have is the process, the work itself. God decides what becomes of it.
Lily and Alana are ‘90s kids like me. We go to the mall, we share an aesthetic taste, a sense of irony, self-awareness, and humor. The only real difference (apart from everything else) is they run in more elevated circles under the watchful eye of 5 million Instagram followers. Despite how it feels, this does not make their experience more meaningful, and I doubt the significance I project on them has the same idealistic glow when viewed from the inside.
I can not force my will on manifesting a result, and no external circumstances will bring greater meaning or purpose to what I do. Either what I do is worth doing or it isn’t. And if it’s worth doing, it doesn’t matter if I sell one painting or a thousand. All that matters is doing the work.
The purpose of my life was never to be an end in and of itself – to achieve enough recognition, build a monument, or leave a legacy of impact that might justify my existence. In the end, it matters very little whether God uses me as a big character or a small one in His narrative. The fact that He uses me at all is humbling beyond words. My life is not my own – I was created for God’s purposes and have been bought with a price. He gets to use me however He wants. And He will.** It may not be what I want, and it probably won’t be. But it will be better, and for purposes far higher than my desire for praise and attention.
So I dress up and go to the Keystone Mall. Anonymous and irrelevant and one step closer to being fine with that.
J.
*This Is What Makes Us Girls, Lana Del Rey
**1 Corinthians 6:20, Ephesians 2:10
April 12, 2022