Being Important

I went to a wedding last weekend up in New York and saw an old friend who flew in from Japan. Since I last saw him, he had become an ultra-devoted Buddhist. He explained to me that his life was completing a seven-year Buddhist cycle.

Seven years ago, because of his interest in hip-hop, he came to New York. There, he became quite depressed and tried to kill himself. He went home to Japan and was institutionalized. He did some low-stress jobs for a while and then decided to take a trip to South-East Asia. I met him in Laos about five and a half years ago. I had planned on moving to Tokyo with my friend, the future groom of the above-mentioned wedding, in a few months so we exchanged information. When the future groom and I arrived in Japan, I contacted my Japanese friend and we hung out quite a bit. He took us to several of his rap shows in west Tokyo. Later on, he met my landlady who offered him a place to stay in one of her apartments in south Tokyo. The future groom and I left Japan, but my Japanese friend stayed in south Tokyo and made several important connections there. These connections eventually led in him getting a music contract with Universal.

So, as he explained to me, the events of the past seven years (New York, hip-hop, his career, south-Tokyo, the groom, Buddhism and me) were coming together and a new cycle was about to begin.

Of course, I think this is all a big load of crap. Anyone can look at their life and imagine patterns and anyone can play a game of “what if” and look at moments of their life as pivotal. Yes, yes, if we hadn’t done things exactly as we had, they would have been different. Amazement in this self-evident statement presupposes that alternate outcomes would not have been better or that life does not have a stabilizing effect.

What is more interesting is that I am considered important by someone for not really doing much.

Many of us try to be important. We try to get jobs that affect the world and produce change. Ultimately, though, nearly all of us feel that we do not make a different. Teachers wonder if their students learn anything or if their knowledge will help their lives. Beauocrats feel like mere cogs. Aid workers feel impotant compared to greater forces. We know that if we died, our jobs would probably continue on without us. A different doctor would do the transplant. A different mason would lay the brick. A different middle-man would push the paper.

Where we really make a difference is in our personal life. Our parents, siblings, old friends and microorganisms that live off of us would notice we were gone and we would not be replaceable. They would carry the weight of our absence forever. To them we are important.

The importance that we strive for every day, we never really achieve. Conversely, the importance that we are born into or come upon by accident through our day-to-day activities is so incredibly heavy and lasting.