We lost an icon this week, not only a star in her chosen profession, but an exemplar of living life full of purpose – a purpose large enough to encompass the tired, the poor, the masses of us huddled in fear and doubt, and those who were and are hungry for joy, for connection and for learning. Dolly Parton made sure, as she kept her eye on the ball of her own career, that she never also lost sight of where she came from, and who most might need that 1,000-watt smile of hers and that galaxy-sized heart.
One beam of her love went directly to children, those who might need a boost to come to know and love the world through reading. Her Imagination Library has sent over 330 million books to children worldwide since the program began in 1995, and I so love how she understood the importance of that philanthropy: “I wanted to help children dream through books the way I dream through music,” she said. What better use of the gifts she had been given than to open the door to the imagination and through that to better possible futures?
In learning about the power of exemplars to inspire us over the last five years, I have come to see that we are most moved by those who not only represent what matters most to us in terms of our values, but those who have the courage to live those values deeply and fully. Exemplars of generosity, like Dolly, show us it is possible to not only be kind and thoughtful, but to plant a stake in those values and act from them every day…as if we ought to be thinking and living beyond ourselves always. As if our place in the net of shared living on this planet mattered because of the ripple we caused in that net. As if we might have a purpose embedded in our DNA that enables us over and over again to look up, notice what is needed, and act within a frame of beneficence.
I don’t know if Dolly ever met the Dalai Lama…but I do believe it is quite possible that she had heard his suggestion that we ought be kind whenever possible, which he would then follow up with the reminder that it is always possible. She certainly lived as if it that were true.
I am not saying hat we all ought to be like Dolly…but I do believe that we all might benefit from drinking in the wisdom of her lived life and consider how we, too, might find a way to a purpose that betters others even as we care for our own selves.
I leave you today with another exemplar in my little bit of world, Mary Oliver, and her poem linking our ability to be grateful to our happiness and our kindness. Somehow they really are all intertwined. Somehow we are better humans when we remember this. Somehow our kindness, our gratitude, our happiness might grant a meaning to our lives that enables a bit of the Dolly-sparkle to shine on.
Why I Wake Early
by Mary Oliver
Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety–
best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light–
good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.
Love, Maria
