How do I know that I am here?

How do I know that I am here?

Is my existence so uncertain?

Is must be in the echoes on the Web, the comments on the blog, the likes and loves, the hahas that say, “Yes, we hear you, so you must exist.”

Is my existence in the follower count? Is it measured in page-views? In the book sales on the royalty report? In the Amazon reviews: “Too long, but some good stuff here”?

Is it the faces in the seats, listening, taking pictures of slides with their phones? The ones who will no longer type passive voice sentences without flinching, or weasel words without wincing? Who want my help with convincing their bosses?

Is it perhaps the analysts, some decades removed, who whinged and carped about every redline comment, but now slide insights like stilettos into clients’ minds and budgets?

The prospective authors whose words I have hacked a path through, whose books have now landed, thud, generating palpable ripples in the world? Is that how I know that I am here?

Is it the children, no longer children, self-sufficient and self-directed, who now quietly ask for help with physics or calculus or buying a used car?

The father, 86 and wrestling new doctors every day, who still laughs at the everyday ironies I share on the phone?

The kiss on the head and peace and quiet that I bestow, that let the artist ply her craft and touch people’s hearts and senses?

Is it the chuckle at the sorry state of the news, or the awe we share at some vista that took a plane, a train, a car, and a hike to get to?

I think I know what it may be. It may be the dishes washed and in the cabinets, the laundry folded in the baskets, the hole dug and the tree planted. Is that how I know that I am here?

I am so needy. I send out pings like a submarine and listen for the echoes. Range, 200 meters. Range, 10,000 kilometers. There must be something solid there for it is reflecting the sounds back in ways that I never expected.

I am so needy. I am so needy that I must give and give just to hear the echoes and know that I am here. How selfish.

How fulfilling.

Talk to you tomorrow. Will you be here?