I sometimes glance at the marquee outside a church. Some give the worship hours and their cleric’s name; others have a pithy little maxim to amuse the motorists. A good example was one about wishing Noah had swatted the two mosquitoes who got about his boat. Still, for the most part, before I have driven a quarter of a mile I can no longer remember what I read. Conversely, there are the occasional signs that stick in my mind like an old song we cannot forget no matter how hard we try.
The church down the street created a truly memorable message: Aspire To Inspire Before You Expire. Yes, it is catchy, it rhymes, but it is annoyingly all but impossible to forget. I think it is a wonderful message because this is one of the most important things you and I can do while we are alive: inspiring others.
A good place to start is remembering the names of some of the people who inspired us. I do not think any of them set out one morning thinking about being a long-term inspiration to others. They did not plot a course of action. They just did it, and we benefited because of them. Of all the teachers we had in school, we remember only a few of them. The same is true of the clergymen and women in our lives. It applies to neighbors, people we meet on the street, and almost anywhere else. From there we move on to the biographies we have read, and once again, some truly inspire and challenge us; others, not so much. Forget the pouting and photo shopping social media “influencers,” who are on a quest for approval from others, while making money. They have an attitude that reeks of, “Look at me! Just look! If you would just apply yourself you can come closer to being as cool as me. But of course, you will never succeed. Like me! so I can make more money!”
It is the cadre of genuine, inspirational people who truly matter. They turn up in odd moments and places in our life, and inspire us to become a better person. A few years ago Pat and I were on a bus tour through Halifax, Nova Scotia. Our guide did several of these trips every day, and she had been doing it for a few years. I asked her for her secret for being so perpetually enthusiastic. She said, “Some days, when I am out of sorts, or I’m hungry, or my feet hurt, I have remind myself that the folks like you who get on the bus are here on vacation. Maybe they saved for it for years; maybe they know it is their last vacation. My job is to give them the best two hours of sight-seeing that I can manage.” I do not remember all that we saw that afternoon, but I do remember her wisdom, grace, and elegance.
That was a good life-lesson in so many ways. While on duty, our guide took the focus off herself and put it on others. I find that inspiring. I thought about her remarks several times over the following days, and it stayed with me. Sometimes, when I do not feel very kindly disposed to the rest of humanity, or when someone really irks me, I have to remember examples like that and apply them. Patience and kindness are inspirational; being short-tempered is not.
Perhaps you had an opportunity to see the Netflix series, The Crown. It is a semi-historical biography of Queen Elizabeth and her decades of facing one challenge, crisis, or difficult person after another. I have seen a number of the film’s trailers, and one is a meaningful exchange between the young queen and her elderly grandmother, Queen Mary of Teck.
Queen Elizabeth was having a rough time of it with government officials, members of her own family, church leaders, and others. She turned to her grandmother for advice, and the older woman explained that she must never let herself be owned by others. To paraphrase her, “A smile, a frown, a raised eyebrow and they will own you. Do nothing that shows surprise or weakness. Doing nothing is the hardest and most important job of all. That is how you inspire others. They want to be inspired and believe they can lead a better life.”
That short segment brought to mind the time I saw the real Queen Elizabeth when she came to St Andrew’s University in Scotland. A covey of dignitaries escorted her into a garden so she could inspect a tree planted hundreds of years earlier by Queen Mary of Scotland. She did it was the grace and dignity for which she was known, but I wondered what was going through her mind. Was she truly interested in this tree, or did she think to herself: “Seriously? I came all the way up here from London to look at a tree so old and feeble its branches are propped up? Which one of my soon-to-be-former knaves put that on the agenda? I should have said ‘no’ right from the start!” Instead, she looked at the tree, spoke to someone standing near her, and then turned and waved in our direction before she left.
Without any of us realizing it, she demonstrated not only graciousness, but sent a clear message that she understood who she was and why she was doing what she did.
It is another life lesson. If the sovereign of the United Kingdom could look at a old tree and hear someone drone on about its importance, then maybe you and I can carry out the trash, hold open a door for another person, wave another motorist through an intersection, while being nice about it all at the same time. That is what I mean about being inspired, and how we can inspire others.
A fellow writer from Minnesota just sent me a message that he is waiting at the boarding gate of an airline. He looked around and noticed that almost everyone was either listening to music on their device, or busy exercising their thumbs on the keyboard. Not one of them looked up, no one was talking to anyone else, and he had better sense than to try interrupting any of them. He added that old geezers like us who dare to do such a thing are sometimes rewarded with some venomous four-letter words or given the middle finger wave.
Nothing in the legal codes demand they look up, much less talk with others. But the social contract to which most of us must give at least a glance and affirm is a good idea, is different. It’s terribly sad because if they had interacted with my friend they would have discovered he has an interest in them.
The world is still full of too much ‘me, myself, and I’ mentality, and far too much of thinking how boring and awful everything and everyone else is. They don’t want to open themselves up to the potential of being inspired so that in turn, the day may come when they can inspire others.
We’re better than that, and we know it. Go forth and Aspire to Inspire before you Expire.
