Etching our Impact in our Communities
We can have such an amazingly positive impact for good in the lives of the people around us by simply doing our best, being kind, and looking for opportunities to serve. And whether or not we get a plaque at the end of the day, our memorial will be seen and felt in the hearts of the potentially thousands of people whose lives we helped to make just a bit better.
There is such a huge pressure on us as modern humans to be notices and to leave our mark. People endow university programs, get public libraries names after them, and spend sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars to get their names etched in stone buildings. And I’m certainly not here to downplay the importance or significance of doing that because some of the world’s premiere artistic pursuits, institutions of learning, and organizations that do truly remarkable work get a large portion of their funding they use to do some very important work from these endowments or foundations.
In fact I live near one of the beautiful Carnegie Libraries that Andrew Carnegie funded to be built all over the country. No, I absolutely respect people from the ultra wealthy to those less so who donate to good causes.
But today I was reminded of the quieter, perhaps smaller in scale ways that certain people make impacts on their communities in simpler, but yet profound ways. I was visiting Depoe Bay, Oregon this afternoon—an old fishing town that has been reinventing itself as a tourist destination over the last couple of decades. And I came across a plaque on an unassuming block of stone tucked away in a corner of a viewing area overlooking the Bay. The plaque was dedicated to commemorating the great contributions of a gentleman named Stan Allyn, who I had never heard of before. He spent most of his life dedicated to improving the town and the surrounding Region.
At first I was inclined to think that the town could maybe have made a bigger deal out of a person like Stan, but then my perspective shifted. There is no way we could honor all the people who probably warrant buildings named after them or plaques in prominent public squares. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could have special holidays to memorialize beloved teachers or neighbors, or community organizers?
But although we might not be able to honor all of them with their names etched in marble, we can honor them in other ways that might actually mean even more and be more in alignment with the kinds of service the people we would like to honor rendered.
We could honor them by emulating their sacrifice, dedication to the common good, and their amazing work ethic. We can honor them by remembering them—their stories, their efforts, and the causes they cared so much about—enough that we can become their new ambassadors. And we can rally others to join those efforts. In that way, their causes can take on lives of their own and live on for generations to come.
We don’t usually sacrifice our time and sweat equity to good causes in the hopes of getting a plaque attached a hunk of stone. But since running across ‘s plaque today, I’ve been evaluating my life to see if it and my efforts are in alignment enough with my values and current endeavors to make any lasting effect on the lives of the people around me locally first and then rippling outward to the broader world.
We can have such an amazingly positive impact for good in the lives of the people around us by simply doing our best, being kind, and looking for opportunities to serve. And whether or not we get a plaque at the end of the day, our memorial will be seen and felt in the hearts of the potentially thousands of people whose lives we helped to make just a bit better.