Sunday Story…Living your Legacy



I am dying. So are you.

Every day I get a little closer to the end of my life. Each of us does. This is the inevitable end of the road for each of us. We are going to leave this physical body behind and the existence we know currently will be no more.

There are several ways to look at this in my mind. One is to look at it with utter defeat and live life like nothing matters. Eat whatever you want, drink, smoke, don’t exercise and generally live life like it doesn’t matter. At the other end of the spectrum is living in utter fear of germs and anything that might shorten the days we have left. Then there is the middle ground. Taking care of your physical body, keeping your mind elastic by being a constant learner, and being connected to the divine source while living in a way that is both harmonious and easeful.

There are so many ways we live past our physical bodies. Both good and not so good. Our children and our children’s children will provide a legacy that will continue for generations in the future. Will that legacy will one of providing service and value to others? Will your progeny value education and ethics?

What are you building that will be standing when you are gone? Are you working on famous or infamous? A Taj Mahal? The Great American Novel? The next Microsoft?

Maybe the question is really: how will we remember you? How will you remember me? Will you be remembered? Why? We remember too many people for their excesses. For their early departures. For their infamous behavior and their outrageous conduct. And, sadly we don’t remember all too many people. The ones that failed to find their purpose. The ones that didn’t even bother looking for a purpose, or denied who and what hat purpose may have been. Those scared, cowering souls afraid to step out of the shadow of the status quo and into the light of transformation.

I don’t need to be famous. I don’t want to be Donald Trump, Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates (I do admire all of them for various reasons though). I do not have an overriding need to be trotting about on the international stage. I do have a need to evolve into the very best human being I can be. To live with purpose and with passion and a zeal for life. I want to be remembered. I want to leave a legacy.

And to leave a legacy I need to live a legacy life. You can’t live a legacy perched in front of the television popping an edible cheese-like non-food product. You have to work at it. Today. Tomorrow. The next day. Until the days are gone. If I live a legacy I will leave a legacy.
Even the fear of death is nothing compared to the fear of not having lived authentically and fully.
Frances Moore Lappe, O Magazine, May 2004

Another quote I have heard and can’t remember goes something like this…when I die I don’t want to go out into some sedate well preserved state. No, when I go I want to slide in to the grave in a cloud of dust and a trail of deeds yet be told of, completely used up and screaming woohoo, what a ride!

Here is an exercise for you, one you may have done before…Write your obituary. Write it as if you died tomorrow. Make it a long one…you know, the kind you see in the paper when someone really important dies. Because you are important. Then write another one. Only this time write it like you died 10 years from now. What else will you have accomplished between now and then? What goals will you have reached? What projects will you have created and finished, what legacy will you leave? What deeds are you going to do that we can tell stories about. What mountains are you going to climb, children are you going to teach, lives are you going to reach, hearts are you going to touch? It’s all there for you to pluck if you just get up and start moving. Give up the expectations and start dreaming and start putting those dreams into the real world. If not you then who?

Now stop worrying about leaving a legacy and start living your legacy. Now. As in Right Now!

Namaste

John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
Follow me at:
Twitter --- http://m.twitter.com/jmariotti
FaceBook --- John Mariotti
Blog Spots…John Mariotti
http://feel-good-friday.blogspot.com/
http://sunday-stories.blogspot.com/