Many years ago I found myself wandering along my local high street, feeling glum about my work.
Apart from telling an intuitive story once a week in a local school, I had not managed to find an audience for my work, despite considerable effort over several years.
“So who am I touching now?” I despaired, almost out loud.
Just then I heard a child shout “Leo!!”
I looked up and saw one of the boys from the school, leaning out of the window of his mum’s car as it drove past.
It shook me out of something. It still does whenever I remember it.
Sometimes I wonder that the huge scale of our modern society makes it hard for us to correctly gauge our impact on the world around us. Our brains evolved from our hunter-gatherer ancestors minutely evaluating their impact on the twenty or thirty people around them. Shorn of our tribe, we must now make wild guesses about who we are effecting, and how.
I can now see that I’ve sought “fame” and “success” because there hasn’t been much else with which to gauge whether my artistic efforts have born fruit or not. In the process, the sacred beauty of touching just one person’s life gets lost.
I once read an after-life account of a man who had led a life of magnanimous generosity. He had been wealthy and had spent large sums on philanthropy. Shortly after his death he was told that he would be brought before “The Council of Elders” who would help him assess how well he had managed to serve his fellow human beings in his life on Earth.
“Surely they will mention all my charitable works!” he thought. But when he stood before the council, he was baffled to find them talking about “the bus stop incident.”
At first he had no idea what they were referring to. Indeed, his confusion only grew as several members of the council agreed that this one event was probably his life’s crowning moment of loving service.
But then he was shown the encounter in question, and it all came back to him. Late one evening he had met a woman at a bus stop who was crying bitterly, overwhelmed with grief. His heart had opened to her and he had spent a long time talking with her, listening to her story, offering condolences, and sharing himself in a timeless moment of loving presence. Eventually, with the Council of Elders’ help, he comes to understand the significance of this easily-forgotten event.
I accept now that all my previous attempts to evaluate my life’s contribution have been faulty. How can I know? A story in the modern age can travel the world, as can any picture, song or piece of music. The artist no longer knows who they have touched.
Several times in the past 12 months I’ve been contacted by someone who had an old storytape of mine and was looking for “Tom Sofer” (as I used to be called). A boy I first knew as a 2 year old who wanted to share those stories with his 10 year old son. A woman who had bought one of my tapes at a festival in Cornwall 25 years ago who said that The Frog Princess was her and her (now grown) children’s favourite story. I consider that “early work” inferior to what I’ve created since, but who am I to say?
Our minds try to create a map of meaning that rarely matches reality. Our lives touch the lives of others in ways we cannot fathom. The question “did I contribute?” is usually asked by the insecure egoic mind, cut off from the source of true compassion, seeking to justify itself. Love moves through us when we are out of the way, whether pursuing our life’s passion, or simply moved by compassion. Who that effects, and how, is often impossible to know.
Addendum
A few months ago, I received an email from a pupil at that school that read as follows:
“Dear Leo,
I wanted to reach out to you to express my enormous appreciation for your stories. I attended Moray Steiner School near Findhorn about 20 years ago and I have such a bright and vivid recollection of the stories you used to create for us, the excitement of coming into school to find out we would be listening to you and those memories have stayed so vividly and clearly in my mind to this day. I tell stories to my friends and partners and the children surrounding me but I always seem to have your voice and energy in the back of my mind. I have now started studying writing and I am struggling a little to bring my creativity back to life. Only now have I found your website and I am so excited to look around and bring those memories back to life a little more. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you for your stories, they have had a more profound effect on my life than you may realise.
With gratitude and warmest regards”
I read this out too, at the True Storytelling evening. It seems to “prove” my earlier intuitive flash and just adds to the mystery of it all.
Leo.