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Useful unfinished essay by Billie Kelpin (Private Page for Annie)
One of the often overlooked, sometimes maligned, but possibly most endearing characteristics of mankind is the desire to be useful. It is pervasive in the species and constant in the individual. At the core of all questions of one's purpose or meaning in life, “useful” is the unspoken object of the infinitive "to be". From early childhood until the end of one's life, the desire to be useful is an underlying need that runs like a deep and hidden current beneath our noblest actions. The desire to be useful is rarely recognized as itself, and is disguised in such phrases as "to leave a legacy," or "to have mattered." However, the term "to be useful" holds less abstraction for the human psyche and it is this simplicity of words might be an easier way to explain ourselves.
When all is stripped away from the reasons we do the things we do, being useful in the world is what often remains. I was recently struck by this concept a few years ago while watching the face of our four-year-old neighbor watering the spring blooming Jacobs Ladder in my garden. Annie and her brother would often cross the street whenever I was working in the flower garden in the front yard. As they turned on the water, filled the sprinkling can and watered the flowers, I knew that they were enjoying the feeling of accomplishment and control they have manipulating the huge green plastic sprinkling can. But on one particular day, there was something more I saw in Annie's face. The Jacobs Ladder was just starting to bloom and I pointed buds that were ready to open. I explained that those tiny bumps we were looking at would be flowers in a few days. As Annie lifted the watering can, poised to sprinkle the plant, I broke in with, "I'm so glad you're watering this plant Annie, because that will help the flowers to blossom better". Annie stood frozen in motion, holding the heavy can in the air bracing the bottom with her other hand. She then turned to look up at me and with wide eyes and asked, "You mean, I'll help the flowers to come?" It was as if she had just figured the relationship between the fun task she was doing and it’s usefulness. I replied, "Yeah, Annie, for sure," and I saw a change in her. She went about watering now with a new thoroughness and attention to the task. Everyday she watched for the blossoms to come, and I knew from her interest, she knew that she was instrumental in bringing them into existence.
Often the need to be useful is confused with the need to be needed.This is perhaps why the term “empty nest syndrome” is rarely embraced by parents. The connotation of empty nest implies that the parents' work is finished. With the need to be needed gone,the parent grieves its loss. Need, however, implies weakness, and it would be the less than noble parent who would desire his or her offspring to be needy. What a parent feels, it seems to me, is that they are no longer useful of the child. Being of use enhances while being needed simply fills a void. It is the wise parent who recognizes that as the child becomes more and more separate the parent becomes useful by evolving in ways that become a model for the child to emulate when they experience the similar life situation later on. Maturing children seem to be universal in their respect for the parent who takes up a hobby, goes back to school, starts a business, joins a community theatre. It isn't so much that it relieves the child of responsibility, but holds a hope that they too will self actualize in this way when they reach the same stage. At a recent graduation at a community college in Minneapolis, an 88-year-old woman received her AA degree in computer science. She had started the program at 86. She seemed just a bit stunned for a moment at the lengthy standing ovation as she walked up to receive her diploma, but then she seemed to know. She knew that it was not only her accomplishment that the audience was applauding, but rather the example that she represented for each of them, and I would think that she went to bed that evening content that she had left something useful to the world because of it...