We’ve all heard the rhetorical question, “If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, did make a sound??” I’ve never liked these little mind games. Their only goal is to be obnoxious, which I say is bad manners. My response used to be, “Who cares?” … that is, until I spent too much of my own time alone, in the bush, where trees fall, and there’s not always someone to hear. I have my very own trees – ‘project trees,’ ‘development trees,’ ‘see-what-good-work-we-do trees.’ Metaphorically, our life is a forest of activity, and we do need people to hear about it and respond by funding it, so, in a sense, the question feels relevant: If a good deed falls in the bush and no one hears about it, does it matter?
I could get lost in the philosophy of it, but the real question is, do the stories that go untold hold significance? All the things that don’t make the newsletter because they aren’t photogenic? All the crucial-process things that need to happen but are definitely not sexy? All the stories that aren’t shared to protect the privacy of others involved? If no one hears about it, does it make a sound?
Our work here is complex – to say the least. We had visitors recently and they said to us what almost all first-time visitors say, “We had no idea there was this much going on.” Truth is, I want people to open my e-mails and I keep them short for that reason, but the consequence is that 99% of what goes on here never makes the hi-light reel, and there’s the question again… If no one hears the good deed fall in the bush… It’s an important question, the answer to which has the potential to be quite depressing. If 99% of my life is unknown, does that mean 99% of my life is insignificant? God I hope not, but it can certainly feel that way.
I think the desire to be known is human, and reasonable, but I have to check my own motivations for what I communicate and how and why. I recently read a missionary update written by someone whose work is similar to ours and so the stories were very relatable, but the style of the writing was provocative and I could tell readers would be impressed not only by the work going on but also by the portrayed awesomeness of the missionaries themselves. And it made me emotional. I started to cry, but didn’t know why, which heaped on additional feels of embarrassment and shame. Jeremy asked me what was wrong. At first I said I didn’t know… why should this move me? It’s their life, not mine… And then I realized: I’m mad I didn’t write it. I confessed to Jeremy: I mean, this is grade A emotive-compelling-self-aggrandizement. I do these same things every day, but I’m not ballsy enough to talk about it like this and so people don’t know how hard I work and I feel unseen and… my ego is mad. These other people were getting the response they hoped for, and I, living the same life, felt painfully unknown.
In its purest form, we want to be known so that we can reap the benefits of loving, human connection, and this good and right. But I think a lot of the time, in fields like mine where communication and media presence is often less about connecting and more about marketing, the desire to be known is quite layered. Many of my colleagues and I could probably confess, I don’t want you to just know what’s happening, I want you to be impressed… and then I want you to respond… so that I can know for sure that what I’m doing is worth it.
For so much of what falls unheard, unseen, unknown, the secret cost is nevertheless substantial – lost sleep, physical injury, emotional drain, mental fatigue. Just because no one learns what went down, and no one has the chance to be impressed by it, doesn’t mean it wasn’t hugely significant for everyone involved. The dynamic between impressive and significant is something I wrestle with daily. I’ve spent nearly 20 years trying to uncouple the two, and still find that old habits die hard.
I come from a culture that doesn’t just look down on unimpressive, it actively disdains it. I was raised in an environment that obsesses over going to a ‘good’ school and getting a ‘good’ job and achieving a ‘good’ life. This all sounds fine but what may not be intuitive if you aren’t familiar with this kind of pretentiousness, is that in this context, the opposite of ‘good’ isn’t ‘bad,’ it’s worthless… and suddenly it makes sense why these pursuits become a matter of life and death. The number of college students from my home community who commit suicide each year is jarring. The fear of being unimpressive and therefore worthless is enough to make people orient their entire lives around becoming something others deem worthwhile, and that often means becoming someone they are not. I can’t tell you how many people I know have attended schools that almost killed them, taken jobs they hated in cities that felt foreign for no reason than because it made people say “Wow!”
Beyond my home town, in my current field, the entire development industry is built around the need to impress. The statistics that make donors write the checks are all that matters… whether or not those numbers are attached to anything that the community holds dear. How many times have NGO workers confessed to us, our work is important insofar as it’s impressive enough to win the next grant… beyond that… I’m not sure we’re making a difference. There’s a tell-tale haze behind the eyes when people get to this point. No one goes into development work without desiring to have a significant impact; but an awful lot leave the field with an impressive resume – and an incredibly jaded spirit.
The pursuit of impressive is spell-binding. But impressive and significant aren’t synonyms and we can’t treat them as such. Impressive is its own thing, with its own equation. Impressive is calculated by audience size multiplied by audience response.
How many people know that I’m great and how well do they respond to my greatness… now multiply those two together and I’ll know my worth.
Audience x Response = Worth
I’ll know my worth… oof. This kind of math is soul sucking. And its why my ego fires up when someone else receives the accolades that I feel I deserve simply because they were driven enough to spin the stories that I didn’t. The need to impress is a core character trait of the Ennea 3, and yet we don’t even realize how exhausting it is until we’re a little too dead inside. The standards are always shifting, and it requires so much hustle – driven by the fear of being not enough – that’s no way to live.
Conflating impressive and significant isn’t a “3” struggle only, but it does make me appreciate how inherent something like this can be. Impressive over significant was once hard wired into my DNA – but then I made a really good choice and Velcro-ed myself to Jeremy who is the least pretentious person on the planet. He has never had a problem calling out, what manner of Ivy League snobbery is this? I joke that he saved me from myself which only makes him roll his eyes because he is literally not trying to impress anyone – including me. (Bless him.)
If I want to leave the glitzy world of chasing impressive and instead achieve something truly significant… what does that even mean?
Websters says that significance is “conveyed as a meaning often obscurely.” That’s the least define-y definition ever Webby.
The descriptor ‘obscurely conveyed meaning’ may raise more questions than answers but I think it’s vague on purpose. Unlike impressive which is pure math, the search for significance is dependent on that which the operating world view deems valuable. If I am coming from a Judeo-Christian, theistic worldview, then I need to define significance according to that worldview’s highest value.
1 Corinthians 13, leaves nothing to debate:
If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Loosely translated, Even if I’m really really impressive, if my heart wants people to know about it and tell me I’m awesome, then I gain nothing.
The pursuit of impressive sets out to achieve a sense of self, but these words say, “I gain nothing.” (Tell Webster we’re getting somewhere…)
And where does the ‘obscurity’ part fit in? Well, Jesus taught us to do good deeds in secret: “Don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” I assume it’s not because he foresaw the era of Instagram and just wanted to nip vanity in the bud. I think the statement stemmed from a spiritual principle Jesus knew was at work in us – that as soon as the good deed is known, we are all too tempted to plug it into the “impressive equation,” hanging our hopes of validation on the oohs and aahs of others. Alternatively, when good is done and no one knows, those actions remain free to be valued for their inherent worth – amplified by love - thus achieving significance.
Can you have it both ways? Be impressive and significant? Maybe, but I have a hunch it’s a lot like the paradox between rich and faithful – it’s doable, but rare, which is why so few people are willing to commit to unimpressive obscurity without humble-bragging about it. St. Bonaventure taught that, in order to work up to loving God, start by loving the very humblest and simplest things and then move up from there. “Let us place our first step in the ascent at the bottom,” he said. Everything about this is counter-cultural. But surely a life of significance isn’t for dead Saints only.
If significance comes down to the inherent value of any action done in love and usually in secret, then I am radically free to move through the world with pure intentions, liberated from the need for anyone to hear my ‘trees fall.’ Furthermore, if I apply this perspective to literally everything, from making breakfast to (proverbially) changing the world, then I can actually live an integrated life because I’m no longer concerned with parceling out what is ‘good’ or ‘worthless,’ ‘impressive’ or not, but simply flowing with the current of God’s love.
I know plenty of people who try to play the game of scales – who are willing to be sacrificial and obscure so long as enough of their life is impressive enough to balance things out and still feed the ego. These people schedule in service, or take gap years to get their selflessness out of the way before getting on with “truly important” things. Richard Rohr shook this up for me when he said that how you do anything is how you do everything. If the desire to impress guides me even some of the time, then make no mistake, that is my truth.
This significance thing is abstract, and it’s mind-bendy and its not at all the normal human way of thinking. We are promised that God, who sees what is done in secret will reward you. I think the reward for chasing significant over impressive is the hard won prize of contentment. I’m content if people ooh and ahh and content if they don’t. Communication isn’t evil. (I will still send newsletters!) Positive feedback isn’t bad. (We need donations to finish the library!) But my soul doesn’t rise and fall on it. To move through life on any other terms is to forgo an invitation into the Divine.
Unclogging the toilet that has a plastic dinosaur in it is inherently unsatisfying if my life goal is to be impressive. Unclogging the toilet in love, however, when the goal is to be significant, is deeply satisfying. If I can walk into school and bandage the wounds and cradle a baby with great love, then no one needs to know that I’m the one doing it because I’m not dependent on their response to make me feel worthy, and I can be happy that the value of those obscure actions, amplified by love, is infinite. To say the product of infinite love is ‘significance’ sounds simplistic, but I fear if we miss this, we may have missed everything.
If the good deed falls in the bush and there’s no one to hear it, does it make a sound? If it was felled to impress, then no. There’s no payday for that lumberjack. But I have to believe that if the tree was planted in love and nurtured in love, and harvested in love, then when it falls, heaven has heard loud and clear, and that matters very much.
