What We Have Done for Ourselves

Maybe it is hubris. Maybe I want there to be this thing that isn’t there. I still wonder how much my words and actions really mattered, in the larger span of time. Are the impacts temporary, permanent, or something in between? You throw enough at someone, something is bound to stick, if not just a little. Right?

Society has long struggled with our mortality. As a human, how do we live on forever? What was it all for if it just ends? I find myself torn between two ideas: the mortal man who desires a lasting impact and the silent professional. Maybe that is why the Albert Pike’s quote has given me such pause:

“What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us. What we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.”

Or maybe that’s why Socrates has inspired me so. A man who lived and died for what he believed. He acknowledged his humanity and vanity, while also striving to be the ideas he could never achieve. He was a man who spoke about sharing knowledge for free and lived only through the words of others.

My name will likely never echo through time. Nor do I seek or desire such infamy. I hope only that my words and actions might ripple through eternity. Lessons learned and actions taken observed and repeated by others. The origin lost quickly to the fading memory of time and distance as they pass from one person to another, like a pebble that disturbs calm waters.

Maybe that is what I am doing. Or maybe not. Maybe it is what I am just wanting to happen. Maybe it is the narrative that resolves the cognitive dissonance. The answer that motivates. Without it, would my life be meaningless?

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This first appeared in The Havok Journal on November 7, 2024.

Jake Smith is a law enforcement officer and former Army Ranger with four deployments to Afghanistan.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.