Lynn linked to this "Manifesto" today.

I think it's pretty wonderful. And it got me to thinking a lot, as I sorted through my little samples of soil this afternoon.

I am bad at self-promotion. I always have been. At least, I'm bad at self-promotion in the sense that it's usually taken these days. I believe (perhaps I was raised to believe) that your work should speak for itself. That is, if you're work's really good, people will notice it and pick up on it and good things will come to you. And conversely, I grew up being at least a little suspicious of anything heavily promoted. (That may have come from my parents. First, my mother, snorting over some of the first "infomercials" ever, "If it's that great, why do they have to buy a half-hour television slot to talk about it?" and my father, when I was much younger, teaching my brother and me to watch ads and figure out, in his words, "how they are trying to get your nickels." (I think he borrowed that phrase from a shady character on Sesame Street.)

And as I grew up, I noticed, in enough cases to cause me to stereotype, that the quiet, slightly nerdy sort of people - the ones who didn't talk much about themselves - were very often the people who "had your back" or who could help you out in a serious problem or who were just generally good people. And that sometimes - sometimes, it seemed more frequently than "sometimes" - the glad-handing, back-slapping jovial hale-and-hearty types, who seemed like everyone's friend out in public, were the worst backstabbers ever. And the people who talked about how great they were often were, to use a good old Texas phrase, "All hat and no cattle."

And one of the things I've come to realize is what's important - what's most important to me. What I term "success." And it's not getting my name out there, not doing cutting-edge research that gets published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution (though it would be nice, there are things I'd have to sacrifice to do cutting edge research that I'm not sure I'd be willing to sacrifice). But what's really important to me, what will make me think as I near the end of my life (God willing, many many years from now) that I was a success. And that's two things:

1. Make someone else's (or multiple someone elses') lives better for having been here. Or make the world better in some substantive way. (Even if it's a LITTLE way, like restoring a little patch of degraded land into a healthy prairie)

2. Do kindness when I can.

I think about the people I really revere - the people I look up to and would like to be like. And by and large, it is not so much for the great, fame-producing things that I remember them or look up to them. It is for the things they did to help other people out.

A concrete example: I have forgotten the names of many of my professors from college. But there is one I remember, because of something she did for me. Right after - like, 2 days after - I was asked to leave the program, Dr. Tosney saw me in the hall. Now, I was not one of her grad students - she was in a totally different field from mine. I had taken her Developmental Biology lecture as an undergrad because I just needed the credit hours in biology, and I was (at the time) taking her technical writing class. She asked me something about how I was doing and when it became apparent that the answer was "very badly," she invited me up to her office to talk.

And she spent a very long time talking to me. And it made an immense difference to me. Some years later, I wrote her a letter to let her know where I wound up and to thank her again, but I don't know if she really fully realizes how much of a difference the talk made.

And it wasn't just the advice she gave me. It was the sheer fact that someone was willing to listen.  That someone was taking time out of their very busy day (and I know she was a busy person; she had grants and research and her own graduate students to attend to and could probably ill afford the time to talk to me). To me, it reminded me that I mattered, even in a system that, in the few days previous, had made me feel like I didn't.

And so, I think of her. When a student needs help but I'm tired and harried and really would rather jolly them out my office door as fast as I can. And I, more times than not, take a deep breath and help the student. Even when I'm tired. Because it's important. Important to my idea of what success is in this life, and important because you truly do not know when a few words from you may make all the difference in the world to someone.

I don't even really know what research (outside of the general field) Dr. Tosney did. I never read any of her papers. But I do remember that she was willing to take a scared, confused, and upset 21-year-old woman up to her office and let her talk- and offer her advice and support - at what was, at that point in time, the worst time in that young woman's life.

And that has nothing to do with branding or self promotion. But it is, what I think, is the most deeply important thing in the world. It is serving another person. It is seeing that other person as a fellow human, acknowledging that they have hurts and fears.

And another thing: There was, literally, nothing I could do to pay her back for her time. I had no claims on her time; there was nothing she could gain from talking to me (and from some of the things she told me - about the program - if I had spread them around, she might have gotten in trouble). But aren't we told somewhere that the greatest service we can do is to those who can't pay us back? That, rather than inviting our rich friends to our banquets so we can impress them (and so we can get invited back to their houses), we should invite people who cannot pay us back? Because it's the right thing to do?

I commented the other day - about "Paradise Road" - and how I don't know what I'd do or how I'd fare in that situation. I think the single most difficult thing would be to have to sit with someone while they were dying. But you know? Now that I think about it - if I had been up at the hospital when my grandmother or aunt was dying, and they knew they were dying, and they asked me to be there, to stay with them to see them "off," as it were - I'd do it. I'd sit there and pray with them even if the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm were the only things I could muster up.  Even though it would scare me. Even though I would worry about the nightmares I'd have afterwards, the aftereffects of it. I'd do it. Because at that point, what that other person needs is infinitely more important than what you want.

And I think that's part of success in life. Determining the times when someone else needs something from you so much more than your desire to be elsewhere. I'm not talking about giving in to every "special snowflake" with demands - I'm talking about the human moments, the times when someone NEEDS another person's presence. When someone they love has died. When they've had a serious diagnosis. When they're at a scary crossroads in life and don't know what to do.

And when I talk about "kindness," I don't mean the kittens-and-rainbows sort of kindness. Sometimes the kindest thing you can do for a person is show them what is commonly known as "tough love." And I've done that. And sometimes - especially for a conflict avoider like me - it's the hardest thing in the world. But again, it's important.

And NONE of that, none of it at all, has anything to do with self-promotion and "branding."

The writer of the "Manifesto" noted that the internet is, when it's at its best, a conversation and not a commercial. And I agree with that. The stuff on the internet that's made me the happiest, and been the most meaningful to me, are the times when I read something someone has written and gone "Yes, yes, that's it. That's what I was thinking but could not put into words." Or when someone writes something and says "This is kind of weird about me" and forty-five people comment that they think or do or feel the same thing, so the original writer can't be that weird, after all. (There's something so comforting about finding out something that you thought was an oddity of yours is actually shared by lots of other people). And Ms. Johnson (the Manifesto writer) notes that we should do stuff, make stuff, put stuff up (like cat pictures) because it makes US happy...and I agree, that you can tell when someone's writing about something they have a passion for, versus when they're writing about something because they think it will get them "hits," and there's a certain sad sterility to those websites that are written purely to attract traffic.

She also says: "Look at what other people are doing, not to compete, imitate, or compare . . . but because you enjoy looking at the things other people make."

I am guilty of this. I am terribly competitive by nature. I feel like a loser and a slacker when someone does something (like writing a book) that I haven't done. I've been known to joke bitterly about Alain de Botton and Wes Anderson - both people born in the same year as I - that they have "actually done something with their lives."

And really, if I'm living in a way that is in alignment with my supposed self-definition of success, I should not feel that. I should not even feel bad that I don't have a knitting pattern published in Knitty, or that I don't get 50 commenters on every post. I should just continue to put up my little quilts and my little socks and my little pictures of soil critters and continue to enjoy it. And be happy for the small band of people (though perhaps, based on the few anonymous comments I've got recently - and I can never tell if they're the same people or all different people) more than a "small band" read here.

But there's also another thing. I wrote about the importance of being kind. I do think, showing human kindness, whether it's in small things, or whether it's in a really huge thing (or sometimes, it's a thing that seems small to the person doing it, but huge to the person who is the recipient - and that may well be the case with Dr. Tosney taking the time to talk with me; she very likely forgot that student she spoke with nearly 20 years ago now, but I will not forget her taking the time to talk with me) is vitally important. Not just because it's all "seeing the other person" and that it's what keeps us from descending into brutality. But I also tend to think that kindness is important on a more mystical level. Sort of a Therese of Lisieux level - one of the things I have seen quoted as her having said is something along the lines of

"Every loving act adds to the balance of love in the universe."

And while, as a Christian, I do believe that the forces of Goodness and Love will ultimately win - ultimately have won, perhaps is a better way of saying it - still, I often feel that what we are all called to do is to do what we can to promote love...maybe somehow the loving acts will call others over onto the side of love. I don't know.

I also think that making an effort to show love to others - especially to those who might be a little unloveable - also works against our human tendency to be selfish, to believe that we are the only one who matters - to believe that we don't need anyone else. (And believing you don't need anyone - or Anyone - else can be seen as the first step to being lost).

So anyway, I really like what Ms. Johnson had to say. I think it's a real danger in our society today, that people are told that they need to be a "brand" and that they need to "sell themselves." And I think perhaps it leads to a dangerous attitude of our age; the attitude that "if someone isn't paying attention to me, I don't exist." (And I admit, that's a trap I occasionally fall into.)