Your school bus driver got hundreds of kids home safely every year. Some people’s legacy is just keeping everyone safe.
STILLNESS
WHAT THIS MEANS
A great deal of important work is invisible because it consists of nothing going wrong. The driver, the crossing guard, the person who checks the equipment: their achievement is an absence, which nobody applauds and everybody relies on. Reliability of that kind is a genuine contribution even when it generates no story at all.
Thank somebody this week whose job you would only notice if it failed. Then take one of your own duties seriously in the same unglamorous way: lock up properly, check the thing twice. Dependability is a quiet form of looking after people.
A QUESTION TO SIT WITH
Who kept you safe in a job nobody ever praised?
MORE IN TIME, MORTALITY & LEGACY
- One day you’ll catch yourself making your mom’s face or saying your dad’s line. People stay alive in tiny reflexes.
- Nobody gets a “previously on” recap for their own life. Pay attention to the episode you’re in.
- Childhood felt long partly because so much was new. Try new things and a year stops feeling like a blur.
Free, with nothing to buy inside it.