I came very close to titling this one, "Making a Mark or Just Pissing on the Furniture". One of the on-going questions that I ask myself is the one that parents (and adults) ask kids all the time, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"
Aside from the usual wise-ass response of "older", I have to admit that I've never really had a good answer to that question. It's actually fairly disturbing, if you think about it, to realize that you don't know. I'm 34 years old and I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. You'd start to think that I'm running out of time and I'd probably agree with you there.
The only thing that I do know about what I want to be when I grow up comes, strangely enough, from a particular issue of a Cerebus comic. [For those of you who don't know, Cerebus is a comic book about an aardvark, written by Dave Sim and published by Aardvark-Vanaheim. A site maintained by a fan can be found here.] For a short stretch of the book (entitled "High Society", Cerebus is the Prime Minister of the city-state of Iest. Cerebus needs to leave towards the end of this arc for reasons that I find I can't remember.
It's a sign of my growing normalcy that I don't feel impelled at this point to run downstairs and dig the Cerebus books out of the comic collection so I can re-read them and answer this question. Maybe comics really aren't as earth-shattering as I thought they were when I was younger...
In any event, Cerebus is getting ready to leave and is confronted by his friend, the Regency Elf (who lives in the Regency Hotel - trust me, you need to read it to really understand it all and even then it may not be enough). The Elf wants to know why he even bothered and why doesn't he just go back to getting drunk and swinging a sword. Cerebus pauses for a moment and finally responds that he "just thought he could make a difference."
I'm sure I've mis-remembered the exact quote, so, if you're a Cerebus fan (or you succumbed to the compulsion to run and check your copy of High Society) don't beat me up for not getting the quote verbatim. Trust me - that's not the point. The point is, however, the extent to which that simple sentence resonated and, to a large extent, still resonates with me. When I grow up, I want to have made a difference. I want to have been known for something.
The hard part, of course, is deciding what to be known for. After all, Genghis Khan and Adolf Hitler certainly are known and they made a difference. I don't think that's how I'd like to make my mark, but, hey, if the time is getting late, I may not have a choice, you know?
I expect (but don't know for sure yet) that I'll at least achieve the normal forms of recognition... I'll have kids who'll remember what a great (or not) dad I was. I'll have made some level of difference to the people I work with and to the few friends I have.
And that's where I get stuck. I've run out of ideas once I get past family and friends. I'll freely admit that I'm not soliciting ideas from anyone out there - just commenting on my own lack of knowing how to make a mark. However, if you've managed to make a mark on the world (or at least would like to think that you have), then sure, feel free to let me know about it. Heck, maybe I've even heard of you.
Added 11/5/01: Now that I've had a chance to think about this one, I'm pretty unhappy with the way it turned out. I believe that I got the point across, but I just don't think I got it across well. I think I'm going to have to revisit this when I feel like I can take time to really put my thoughts together cohesively, rather than just slapping them down into electrons.
Also, I've decided that I'm going to do my best to not edit anything I write post-facto. I'll do my usual editing and restructuring while I'm writing, but if I leave an entry because I think I'm done, that's it. At best, I can come back and add to it as I've done here.
Author: ben@tmk.com