Somebody
“The grains of sand that pass through the funnel of life’s hourglass are only dry and colorless if they are observed from afar; up close each one is as colorful as any rainbow, as full of energy as any thunderstorm. Poetry is there for the asking.” DEW 1/16/2017.
While everyone isn’t necessarily “A” somebody, everyone is somebody who matters. My Dad was heroic in this regard. He remembered everyone. The lower on the economic food chain someone may have been, the more he remembered them. Janitors, waitresses/waiters, maintenance workers…he knew all of their names. He’d ask you about your story, ask you to describe the grains of sand in your hourglass, and if you told him he remembered. Dad would be dumbfounded by the denigration of these and other physical jobs so prevalent on mainstream media and other outlets.
Dad had a way with frontline workers. It was natural, a gift for sure, but he obviously worked at it, too. Did you have a problem getting THAT gift this year? Turns out, that’s not a new phenomenon caused by “COVID-related supply chain issues.” My Dad had a coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG) in 1985 at the peak of the Cabbage Patch Doll craze. Somehow he found a Cabbage Patch Doll for every nurse in the Coronary ICU to thank them for their care.
So what’s the point? It shouldn’t take a pandemic that interrupts every aspect of everyday life for us to notice the folks who aren’t anywhere near the top of the economic food chain. CEO’s saved the world in the early parts of the pandemic (Sunday NYT)? Bullshit. Company X allowed the economy to survive because it made “stay at home” work possible? Yeah, that’s bullshit, too. The person who answers the phone in my office or the person driving the garbage trucks had just as much impact as that self-satisfied CEO who’s biggest sacrifice was skipping Davos this year.
There’s no such thing as a small life. Each life is full, vibrant, colorful, and important. Each little grain of sand flowing through the hourglass is as meaningful as the next.
It’s been years since my Dad died and yet I return to his lessons on a daily basis. I see him talking to the guy who swept the floors in the factory. There his is, sitting down to lunch with a banker. If I close my eyes and just listen to the personal banter it’s hard to figure out which is which. The sands of time that flowed for each looked the same to my Dad. He heard the poetry, saw the beauty. My Dad made every life he touched bigger.
Everyone was a somebody.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 4th, 2026 at 1:20 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.