The phrase “Be Useful” strikes me as being at the heart of what it means to live happily on this earth. It is actually a truncation of the phrase, “learn to be useful.” As we grow up we have to learn how to be useful, since as babies, we’re incapable of being useful. Parents demonstrate how useful they are to us as children with the things they do to take care of us; they protect us, feed us, clothe us, love us. We, in turn, demonstrate our love, and therefor our gratitude, to our parents and to the rest of the world by learning ways to be useful. Learning to be useful is learning to be happy. Being useful is being happy.
I took the photos of the letters in this image and used Photoshop® to put them together. I purchased three frames at a thrift store and had different sizes of the “Be Useful” image printed to fit the frames, which were of different sizes, to make the frames useful again; they’re very happy as a result. I gave one to Skyler’s family, one to Cory’s family and I kept one for me and Mimi.
Steven Ralph “Papa Steve” Sharp
April, 2023
