“Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.”
― John Le Carre, “The Chancellor Who Agreed To Play Spy”, The New York Times, May 8, 1974

We’ve all heard that we are unique. That fact is hammered home by helpful people throughout our lives. And what is unique but the differences between us anyway? More to the point, we are each going through a life solely our own—experiencing things that no one else in the history of humanity has or will ever experience. That last sentence ought to have an exclamation point (!).

We owe it to ourselves to document this unique path we’re on in some way, if only to remember who we once were. A journal or log book will do the trick, and so too will a blog. Pictures naturally capture the essence of a moment in time, or at least our perspective of that moment in time. And the collection of stuff we’ve collected along the way gathering dust on our shelves hints at who we once were and what created the current model on display.

I celebrate the daffodils I planted twenty years ago as much for the time machine they represent to a younger version of me as for the bold announcement that they made it through another winter just as I did. Each project we do represents some measure of the person we were at the time, each brush stroke, each nail hammered home, each brick laid down on a path we’ve walked upon ever since. We are the sum of our days.

But we know that the bulk of who we are will live and die with us, never revealed to the world. To the world we are anonymous at worst, and a passing fancy at best. That doesn’t make our lives meaningless—rather a blank slate from which we may begin to influence the lives of others in meaningful ways. We are matter, and we may choose to matter, when we apply ourselves to the task. We may thus make a ripple that echoes as identity, even as the puzzle of our life story will forever be ours alone to ever truly know.