Today I hosted a large event at Mozilla. Great times were had by all.
We shared insights and inspiration on the Polish internet market. At
the end, the space was quite a mess. So my boss and I cleaned up for a
while. It was quite refreshing after 8 hours of speeches, workshops, notes and debates. The time made me think back on luminaries I've heard over the years talking about the virtues of cleaning up. For instance:
There was a large event on the national mall, a park in the middle of Washington, DC, my father told me. I'm not sure the year, but I think it was the late 1960's to 1970's. But the story goes, that Amercian beat poet Allan Ginsberg took the stage at the end and said, "Nobody is going to remember a word that was spoken today. But they are going to remember us by the trash we leave behind. So make sure to pick up after yourselves!" Funny that Ginsberg's words about nothing being memorable but the trash
might have actually been the most memorable comment made that day,
echoing in legend three decades or so later.
I thought back on a talk that San Francisco Zen Center's Paul Haller gave. A touching account of the wake gathering after the passing of one of his wife's parents. He could do nothing to address her grief, so he cleaned the bathroom. When his wife asked why he was doing that, he commented that it was the one thing he could think of that would make the world better at that particular time of hardship.
Another Zen author Thich Nhat Hanh has a charming take on reframing the act of washing the dishes. He often re-frames ordinary experiences of life in other terms that promote mindfulness. For instance, to him phone calls, red lights and horns are people calling on you to be present. His re-framing of washing the dishes is to imagine that he is washing the baby Buddha. Being of a Hinayana tradition, Buddha nature is a an aspect within ones self, rather than something without. So dish washing is a perfection of self in another light.
The place was quite clean by the end of the night. So nothing remained but the memories of inspiring conversations. Impressions that will last, even if the words do not.
As the burner community motto goes, "leave no trace". That's how good impressions can last.
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