To Be Forgotten

We all want to be remembered.

Even if we do not think very highly of ourselves, we want someone to remember us. We want to be thought of, especially when we are not present. We want people to want us. We want people to miss us.

We think that if we are remembered that we are important.

There is a very natural response that we all take when we encounter this desire to be remembered. We decide what we think is the most important thing in the world, and we do everything we can to be a part of that important thing. 

Some of us will insert ourselves in to every community because we believe that communities are important. Some of us will do extensive humanitarian work because we know that there are people who are in need. Some of us will receive the highest degrees we can because we have faith that our knowledge is important. Some of us will make inventions to fix a problem because we know that every problem has a solution.

We do things.

People remember things. They remember the great works, the big ideas, the wonderful communities, everything we do can be remembered.

But there is a great danger in doing things to be remembered.

This is a common problem in science. Everyone knows what cancer does to people. Everyone knows what germs are. Everyone knows that certain drugs help with pain or lowering cholesterol or whatever ailment we have. Everyone knows that allergies suck. We know many big ideas in science.

We know that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

But do we know the man who kept power in his house because he made this discovery?

Do we think about how no one believed the mitochondria mattered, so this man had to struggle to make enough money to make the discoveries and keep the lights on in the lab?

When we make our lives about what we do, we are not remembered; our works are remembered.

This is not a bad thing. Of course it is better to remember the good things brought in to the world, and of course it is good to praise the action more than the person. The thing is, if we want to be remembered, if we want to be considered as important, if we want to be wanted…

We have to be more than our stuff.

We have to see that there is more.

At the beginning of this post, I described what draws us to our “thing.” We identify something that we deem to be important, and then we do what we can to become a part of that important thing. Ultimately, we see how these little things matter. Not just to us, but to those around us.

We do what we deem to be important because we care about others.

However, somewhere down the line we stop caring about how we impact other people. We find the special thing that we can do, and we do everything in our power to be the most important person in that field, in that community, in that career, in everything we do. We figure that if we are needed in these important areas that people will remember us.

But there is a difference between being needed and being wanted.

To be wanted does not require perfection. To be wanted does not require excellence at every moment. To be wanted does not require things.

To be wanted requires love.

Unfortunately, we think that love requires things to be done. We live under the impression that if we do not do specific things that we cannot be loved. We think that we need to give people something so that they can give us love in return. For whatever reason, we believe that the things we do reveal our love.

Yes, we do need to do something, and yes we need to live life in order to love and be loved, but it is not what we do that determines if we are loved or not.

It is why we do what we do that defines our love.

Like I said, we do many things because we deem them as important. But do we ever think about why they are important? Do we make our actions personal? Do we consider how we personally fit in to what matters most in the world to us?

It is our why which gives us a passion.

Passion reveals who we truly are. It reveals what we value most. Whether it be the exact job we are doing, the community we join, the beliefs we hold, our passions, when fully revealed, are what drives people to love us, to want us.

Then, no matter what you do, it will always be important. It will always matter.

Dear Reader…you always matter, no matter what.

Now, when we see how much something matters to someone because of their passion and love for it, we are called to action. Love is not meant to keep us in place. Love is meant to be grown, to change our inner lives and our outer lives just the same. When someone is loved, the world changes.

So when someone reveals their very selves, which is a very risky task, we are called to be more than what we were before.

Sometimes that means you have to step out of your own spotlight for a while.

Some of my Dear Readers will remember my “Nobel Prize in Dreams” post. For those who do not, in this post I describe a project that held incredible importance to me. It was an experiment that described a huge gap in a Nobel Laureate lab’s work, and I had to spend nearly a year waiting for my advisor to give me the OK to perform this experiment.

I never explained why that project was so important to me.

My greatest experiment, the one that has inspired some of my favorite images and what I will some day hope to found my own lab off of, actually came from the hopes and dreams of my undergraduate.

From the moment I shared my papers with my student, I could tell that she cared a lot about one particular aspect of my project. It was something I was passionate about, but I knew that my advisor brought me in to our lab to do the mouse and fish work. Anything I did outside of that would be considered a “side project.”

It wasn’t a priority to my advisor, but it was a priority to my student.

My heart broke when my undergraduate shared how she felt after she created some of the most important mutations and the most important foundational experiments.

“It doesn’t matter Felicity,” she said, “I have so much data, and it looks right, but it doesn’t matter. No one will ever see it. No one will care.”

That night I sat down and started to outline what I needed to do to make the project move forward. I wrote out all of the reagents we had, and I wrote out every single piece of evidence we already had to support our work. Then, when I found any gaps, I started to pull papers from the 1970’s to the present to figure out everything I could. My undergraduate believed in this project, and she wanted to be able to contribute to our lab’s incredible efforts to cure Lysosome Storage Disorders.

Because my undergraduate was willing to share her passions, her hopes, and herself with me, I was called to action. I was called to love her as her mentor.

Sometimes I worked on what was considered low-priority more because I cared more about my undergraduate.

When we are called to love others, we have to be willing to give up our importance. We have to be willing to give up our own esteem for the sake of those around us. If it is in the workforce, you will likely have to take time to help a struggling co-worker achieve their goals. If it is in a group of friends, you will likely have to go outside of your comfort zone to help someone feel included. 

Regardless of the situation, when we are given the opportunity to love someone, we have to give up ourselves for their sake.

We have to forget ourselves.

At times this will seem completely insane. If we want to feel loved, if we want to be wanted, then why would we do anything that takes away from people knowing us? Why would we pursue the hopes of those around us if we do not have the same priorities? There could not be a benefit to doing something other than what is important to us. At least that’s what we tell ourselves.

By loving others through what matters to them, we show them that they matter.

And as they grow in love and confidence, they remember what you did for them.

They will love you.

People may not always remember what you did for them, but they will always remember that they were loved by someone. If we are willing to forget ourselves for others, then we allow them to be loved. Through love, our greatest deeds are forgotten, we are forgotten. However, the person we love will always know that they matter. They will walk with their head held high because they know that there is more to life than what we can control on our own.

Even if your lives should separate, they will remember you.

I have had many transient friends. In fact, there are still people who I run in to on a fairly regular basis that do not really remember me anymore. They know that I work on STARD9, and that is fine and good, but this one moment which happened a few weeks ago showed what people really remember about me.

I greeted some of these Facebook Friends I have in the ND community, and I walked away to hear this conversation.

“Who was that?”

“Felicity.”

“What does she do?”

“I don’t really know. I just know that she’s really happy and loves her undergrads.”

People can either remember you for the work you do, or for who you are. It is true; I am a happy person and I love my undergraduates. I have a passion for bringing light in to the lives of those around me. I have a passion for mentoring and fostering a community in my lab. These things drive me forward, and they make me who I am. That is what people remember. They do not remember my work, nor do they care.

But they are happier because they knew me.

What they don't know is that my undergraduate, who I spoke highly about, is the reason why I developed such a passion for mentoring.

When I was alone, heartbroken, and doubting my own skills, my undergraduate helped me find the strength I needed to work again. Because I believed in her, she believed in me too. She never let me give up, even when my experiments weren't working. I always knew that I could depend on my mentee.

She helped me become an integral part of our lab, and because of that, other undergraduates came to my aid as well. In fact, some who have already graduated are still supporting me in all of my efforts.

But I would not have any of this if it were not for my mentee's support for my own dream to run a lab someday.

Now some of my Dear Readers may be wondering what happened to my undergraduate’s precious project. It was actually a couple of weeks ago that the ending of this project came to fruition.

After completing our extensive project, I looked at my advisor, and I explained to him every single step that my undergraduate and I took to prove our hypothesis. Method after method, step after step, stat after stat, paper after paper, I went through them all so that he could hear just how much we did in virtual obscurity.

The next day my advisor went to the chemistry department to develop a drug based solely on my undergraduate’s model.

The day after that, my advisor stood in front our some of the most important people in our field and said, “And we are now working on a therapy that targets this activity directly.” He referenced the work inspired by my student.

When we are willing to take risks and allow others to be a part of that risk, amazing things can happen. It may seem like everything we do is unimportant. It may seem like we are forgotten. It may seem like nothing matters.

Everything has purpose.

You, Dear Reader, have a purpose, and you deserve to be loved for it.

Let’s go forward together.