A November 11, 2019 article written by Brett Steenbarger, published in Forbes, called “The Profound Psychological Benefits of A Purposeful Life” shared important insights. To quote,
“A growing body of research finds that purpose in life leads to greater emotional and physical health, including increased happiness and enhanced work productivity. Research commissioned by the John Templeton Foundation defines purpose as “a stable and generalized intention to accomplish something that is at once personally meaningful and at the same time leads to productive engagement with some aspect of the world beyond the self.””
In his renowned bestselling book, Man’s Search For Meaning, Victor Frankl described his harrowing recollection of atrocities and survival of a Nazi concentration camp. Amidst the torture, starvation, and indiscriminate killings, he lived. The message Frankl shared was that it was his will to live, and burning desire to be with his wife and family again that was core to his survival. Additionally, his purpose was bolstered by his determination to write about and share his observations from his incredible experience and how he owed his life to purposeful existence and to urge others to seek it within them as well.
Most certainly, legacy is one of the strongest drivers of purposeful living. One entrepreneur I spoke with confirmed this and shared the main reason he founded his company, which is dedicated to connecting industry partners and funding in pursuing “nature-based solutions that remove carbon, restore biodiversity & support local communities”. His reason for shifting his entire life energy to support this endeavour was based on an imagined conversation with his young children. He said that he envisioned 16 years from now, he would be sitting at the table over a wine or a beer with his young adult children as they reflected, saying, “You and your entire generation knew climate change was an undeniable thing.” Then asked pointedly, “What did you do about it?” His purpose stems from his desire to leave the legacy that he was one of the people who knew and acted.
For me, legacy guides all my actions. While motivated by a deep desire to be of value and impact to the world, my actions are guided by how I want to be remembered and considered by my children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. I only hope that they will know my name, what I stood for and the difference I made in this world.
That is why I say, “impact is interstellar”. Because not only are the effects or our actions felt across the time we live in today, but they ripple through generations – and through time and space. Anecdotally, we understand this to be true, but measuring it can be difficult. Witness it as a ripple, or think of it as the “Butterfly Effect”, and you know it is real.
At a quantum level, even Einstein had difficulty reconciling the concept of two unrelated bodies directly impacting each other across space and time. He called it “Spukhafte Fernwirkungen”, or spooky action at a distance. The idea of sub-atomic particles interacting simultaneously across the galaxy simply could not be explained in his relativity construct…until recently, when this entanglement at the quantum level was observed with lasers.
While Einstein was open to the concept, he could not explain it. Persistence to validate something that was suspected, but undocumented and theoretical, was finally validated by those who did not accept the limitations of time and space as previously understood.
What does this mean?
Well, in quantum physics it means a single subatomic particle can impact another, adjacent to, meters away, worlds apart or even galaxies away. In turn, those particles impact others and so on. The smallest things make big differences. The impact of these interactions transcends time, space, and generations. Thus impact is interstellar and once started creates a cosmic ripple.