The Reason Why You Want to Make an Impact Is the Most Important

The Reason Why You Want to Make an Impact is the Most Important

John Paul Derryberry

Scrolling social media, while my girls watched Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, I stumbled on a post from someone who fancies themself an influencer. Their whole post and video was about leaving an impact and their desire to add to the skyline of their city by building high-rise buildings and slapping their name on them. They attempted to pontificate about how that type of impact is everlasting; that years later, people would have to utter their name if they had any reason to enter or meet up at that building.  I’m not one to squash anyone’s dreams but I do take issue with this being a noble way to leave an impact. I kept asking myself why.

Building buildings with your name on them is a goal, and depending on whaI  you plan to do with that building, a worthy goal. But let’s not pretend it’s for this altruistic reason of having this grand, positive impact on society. It’s a giant structure with a name on the side. It’s an attempt to live forever. We are seeing how people with their names on buildings act when exposed to scrutiny. It’s not always pretty to look behind the curtain. A building with your name on it is a fine goal, if you want your name uttered for as long as possible, but that in and of itself doesn’t create a ripple of positive impact through the centuries of future human existence; neither does peddling videos about transcending into some spiritual plan if we buy your product. It’s a grift, simple as that. We have a lot of grifting going on through social media. It’s eroding real impact almost as fast as we're melting the polar ice caps.

The impact comes from the motivation behind the desire to build this grand gesture. Do you want to build this so that poor kids can see that a guy who also grew up poor can have something to point at and say, "I can too"? Do you want to show people of the LGBTQ community it’s possible to build safe places for people to be unashamed to be themselves? Do you want to create a place where being vulnerable is not just allowed but encouraged? The "why" is always more important than the "what". It’s just harder for us to communicate the why; it’s such an internal, and oftentimes not beautiful, thing to communicate.

The why of the impact we are trying to create can be messy. It’s a factor of the good and bad of us: proving people wrong, correcting a false narrative, the love and compassion we have for others, the desire to create a better world, the self-desire to say to everyone, "look at me, look at what I did". And until we know the reason why, it’s tough to know if the impact this person is creating is worth investing in; because leaving an impact is great, but much of human impact has been ruining things. I think we forget that part of leaving an impact. Are we destroying for  the sake of making ourselves look better or because we need change? We can only answer that question by what truly motivates us and the community that motivates the people who believe in us.

If we are unable to share the not-so-nice parts of our why, we will leave an impact behind that is littered with hurt, pain, and destruction. So strive to build your grand structures, take on the world, push your agenda, and see what you can accomplish. But always, always remember that the real reason of why you are doing this will be its final impact. It will be what everyone talks about after you are gone. The question is what will they say, and trust me, it won’t be how pretty the building you built is. It will be about the character of the person who built it.