On leaving things better

Did you come here? Are you leaving? Then your whispers and your labor will remain behind. If things are better than they were, congratulations! If they are less than you had hoped, was it your fault? Can you say, looking firmly at something, "I did that" and let your hand fall upon the rock in the wall or let the tree you planted cast some shade upon your face? Don't worry: in time your meaning for this place will be as water to the stream or rain to the cloud. Time washes away the grime and the paint, and soon, even the tree will be gone. But what is it to you if your work only remains as a whisper of things that were when things are better now?