Be Useful
The cartoonist and author Scott Adams died this week after a public battle with cancer. Most of us knew him for the Dilbert comic strip, poking fun at the office workplace. After he was cancelled due to political correctness run amok a few years ago, he continued to speak what a lot of folks found to be common sense…and that included support for the current president.
I knew of his work only casually…the comic strips back in the day, and now the fact that he had a social media and podcast following. I was struck by the fact that he spoke with clarity as he knew the end was coming. Following a particularly grim prognosis from a doctor, he wrote a “final message” on New Year’s Day, which one of his former wives read during his scheduled podcast slot the day he died.
“If you are reading this, things did not go well for me,” he began. He also publicly accepted Christ.
He noted that after a divorce, he focused on sharing with the world; as he wrote, “I looked for ways I could add the most to people’s lives, one way or another” and turned to writing what he says he hoped would be “useful books” on various life lessons.
He closed by saying, “If you got any benefits from my work, I’m asking you to pay it forward as best you can. That is the legacy I want.”
Then he simply wrote words that really struck me: “Be useful.”
What that means is different for each of us, because we each have different skills, strengths, and talents to bring to the whole. Often we establish high-minded and lofty goals for ourselves, then feel bad when we don’t attain them because they probably weren’t realistic to begin with.
I’ve often said that with what we do here at the radio station, my goal is to not waste your time. Whatever we do, I hope it has value for you. If not, that’s a failure…and admittedly, that’s sort of a low bar. But instead of measuring our value by ratings points coming from a quite flawed system, with some arbitrary numerical goal, I just want us to not waste your time.
Maybe that’s why “be useful” hit me as it did. So simple, yet so difficult…because it forces us to actually create something, or do something, that has value—not measured with a numeric counter, but in a broader “benefit to society” sort of way.
There’s more to ponder on this; for me, anyway. But for now…perhaps “be useful” would not be a bad mantra for all of us. Certainly a fine legacy to leave.
