Are You Significant?

Walking down the street on my way to a Pilates class I saw a young woman leaning against a sofa in front of a moving van. The last day of every month on the Upper West Side of Manhattan is moving day, at least for someone, so that didn’t surprise me. What did surprise me was the query on her t-shirt: “Are you Significant?”

Staring upwards at the blue sky flecked with white clouds, I inhaled deeply and considered: Am I significant? What criteria might she use? Would my job as a Hospice Spiritual Counselor count? Probably not. Folks like me don’t make enough money. How about my age at 56? Nope, probably too old. What about my looks? Notwithstanding the regular Pilates classes, I still have a comfortably rounded middle-aged body. That would surely not make the cut. So, am I significant?

Crossing the street as the light turned green, I shifted the criteria slightly and looked at it from a contemporary American spiritual perspective. Was I meditating enough, peaceful enough? What about my diet? Did I need more fiber or dark green vegetables? What about forgiveness? Had I done my atonement sincerely enough?

Needless to say, it was exhausting doing what amounted to a tax audit on my own life. What did I have to show for all the work and play and hardships and triumphs of my 56 year old life? What was my “net,” and was it significant?

I thought of a question my husband asked me recently: of what achievement or accomplishment would I be most proud at the end of my life? I knew immediately: the loving and close family we had created with our two sons. No external honor, however grand, could come close to the intensely challenging and deeply fulfilling experiences I have had as a mother, wife, sister and daughter. Neither published writings, nor my degree from Harvard, nor the hours spent providing spiritual care to patients would occupy my mind in my last hours upon the earth. Of that I was convinced.

The deep human connection – moments of great despair, times of boundless joy and celebration, making mistakes and then righting them, apologizing, forgiving and being forgiven, honoring the majestic in each other – this stuff will have comprised the most significant experiences I have had.

Through that lens our culture has it backwards. The tax audit method is bone-chilling in its calculation and doesn’t even hint at what is truly significant in this human life. Money, fame, good looks, or political or social power – these do not comprise significance in a human life. Rather the quiet, humble and private connections we forge with family, friends, and even strangers indicate the true value of our lives. When my sister Cathy died at age 59, who would have had the audacity to ask us if she had been significant? She was indispensable to us, her family. Her smile, her voice, her beautiful eyes, her integrity and her love were knitted together into our viscera and our happiness.

Rather than asking “Am I significant?” perhaps we should ask “To whom am I significant?” Whose heart, history and memories are bound up with mine? Whose sorrows did I alleviate, or whose hunger did I assuage? To whom did I show mercy and forgiveness? When did I humble myself to make room for another? These, I decided, were the measures I would take when I next asked myself, “Am I significant?”