What Do I Owe the World?

The Other Voice: Let me ask you a different kind of question.

Not what the world owes you.

Not what your family owes you.

Not what customers owe you.

What do you feel you owe the world simply because you had the chance to live in it?

Gelme: I owe gratitude.

Gratitude for this amazing experience called life, with all its ups and downs.

It is so rich because of everything the world gives us to experience.

And I owe one promise.

To keep creating beauty.

Just because beauty makes the world better.

The Other Voice: What strikes me is that you did not say, “despite all the ups and downs.”

You included them.

As though the richness of life does not come only from the beautiful parts.

It also comes from contrast.

From everything that teaches us how deeply we can feel.

Gelme: That is how I see it.

I would not want only the easy parts.

Of course, when something painful is happening, you don't think, “How wonderful, I am learning.”

But later you can look back and understand that it became part of you.

The good parts and the difficult parts together make life rich.

The Other Voice: And then there is the second part of your answer.

You said you owe a promise to keep creating beauty.

Not success.

Not fame.

Not some enormous achievement.

Beauty.

Gelme: Because beauty matters to me.

I have always believed that if people notice beauty, the world becomes a little better.

It does not mean beauty solves every problem.

Of course it doesn't.

But when somebody sees something beautiful, even for a moment, it changes how they feel.

That matters.

The Other Voice: Then perhaps you do not see beauty as decoration.

You see it almost as nourishment.

Something that reminds people to stop.

To notice.

To feel.

Gelme: Exactly.

And it does not have to be one of my scarves or hats.

It can be anything.

A garden.

A painting.

Music.

A beautiful building.

The way light comes through a window.

Anything that makes you notice the world a little more.

The Other Voice: Then maybe your promise is larger than continuing to make felt.

The felt is one way you keep the promise.

These conversations may be another.

Perhaps what you are really promising is to keep noticing beauty and to keep putting some of it back into the world.

Gelme: I like that.

Because I do not know what I will be making ten or twenty years from now.

Maybe it will still be felt.

Maybe it will be something else.

But I hope I will always create something.

I don't think I know how not to.

The Other Voice: Goals can be completed.

A business can succeed or fail.

A collection can be finished.

But a promise like that is different.

You don't finish it.

You live it.

Gelme: That is true.

I don't think I need to leave behind something enormous.

If something I create makes another person stop for a moment and notice beauty, that is enough.

It means I gave something back.

The Other Voice: Then perhaps gratitude is not only something you feel.

It becomes something you do.

Life gave you something worth noticing.

And your answer is to keep noticing it—

and to keep making sure some of it does not disappear unnoticed.