Fingerprints

I sent a friend a photo of a project he had begun years ago, which continues today, having affected many, many lives in a positive way. In the photo were the signatures of some of the people on the ground floor of the project, with their hand prints by their names on the wall, created at the time the whole thing started. It was a happy memory and I thought he should know that his good work continues.

A message of thanks came back. But the thank you was followed by another line. It said, " and thanks for letting me know that my fingerprints still exist somewhere."

I sent an immediate response of chastisement, reminding him that he was clueless about how many peoples' lives he had affected in the past and still does to this day and to get over his feeling of uselessness.

And I meant that. That's what friends are for. To be sensitive.

But his words bounced around in my head for the rest of the day. I'm pretty sure I understood what my friend was trying to say, questioning whether his life's work really mattered to anybody.

But his words began to speak something different to me, whether he meant them to or not. I'm pretty sure after the comfort I offered in response to his message he would be glad something was bouncing my head.

"Thanks for letting me know that my fingerprints still exist somewhere . . ."

Fingerprints are synonymous with identity. It is said that no two designs are alike. I have had clients who obliterated their fingerprints, or attempted to, to further their chances of success in their chosen fields of theft and burglary. They wanted to lose their identity, or at least that part of it.

But some of us lose our identity without meaning to. Our days are filled with things to do, goals to meet, people to help, people to please. Passions and politics that don't play well with the crowd we must satisfy are stashed away. Sensibilities that seem senseless we accept to fit in. Time taken by and given to others leaves no time for ourselves. Before long there is no ourselves, we have given us away. Just a collage of others' expectations. Our true identity is gone. The world around us has given us a new one. And we can't remember where we set the real one down.

It might be nice to have what my friend has, even though he doesn't realize it. A place in the past with his fingerprints right there on the wall, a monument to at least a part of his true identity reflected in the productive passion of earlier days. A place where, if he can't remember where he set his old identity down, at least he can be reminded of where to start looking.

I saw a lone Canadian goose fly across the sky over a pasture today. It was flapping its wings furiously and honking like an ambulance clearing traffic, but there was none around him up in the sky. I don't know why the goose was flying solo, but he looked odd, being away from a formation of other geese. He looked odd because a Canadian goose is not supposed to be flying alone. He is supposed to be a member of a large flying V. But he was just a flailing punctuation mark streaking across the sky. He had lost his real identity, and he was straining to find it again, flying as fast as he could, and making as much goose noise as possible, to get to that place where he knew it lay, where he saw it last, in his case, back with his flock. He was heading in a direction he had been before, the way that they had always come. He at least had a place to start looking.

So, I don't know, maybe my friend was saying both things. He wasn't sure that what he has done and what he is doing really matters. Or maybe he just can't see it anymore because he left his real identity somewhere back a ways, or perhaps the people he helped then and now took it from him without thinking.

Either way, at least he's got a place to go back to and start looking. Fingerprints on a wall.

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