Who I Want To Be When I Die

Picture yourself going to a funeral of someone you care about. You walk inside, there are flowers, soft organ music, faces of friends and family. You feel the sorrow of losing a friend, family member. You recount the joy of having known them as it radiates from your heart. A soft smile comes across your face as you remember them.

You walk down the front of the room and peer inside the casket, and you suddenly come face to face with yourself. This is your funeral, 5 years from today. All these people have come to honor you, pay respects, and express their feelings of love, gratitude, appreciation of knowing you and for having you in their life.

You notice 5 speakers awaiting to speak as you take your seat with the program in your hand, waiting for the service to begin. One speaker is from your family, another a co-worker, another from your church, another a long time friend. Think deeply about what you would like these speakers to say about your life, how you lived. What character did they see in you? What achievements or contributions would you want them to remember?

Over the last few months I’ve been thinking more about this topic. My father’s grave stone sits 200 yards away from my doorstep, I see it every day. I think of the man he was, I saw who he wanted to be, his aspirations, and the struggles of his life. I didn’t appreciate him then as much as I do now that he’s gone.

On the day you leave this earth, there will be two dates on your tombstone, the day you were born and the day you left. In the middle, between those two dates there will be a dash. That dash represents YOU, your life here on this earth. All the beauty and the ugly. How will you live it? How will the speakers at your funeral speak about you? What will they say?

Choose to live. Start right now and create the person whom you want to be and achieve your dreams. Nothing is holding you back except yourself.

"What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others."

— Pericles

No one ever takes a picture of something they want to forget, so seize the day. Take plenty of pictures in your mind. Life is an adventure and you have to live in the present, grasp your eternity in the moment because 20 years from now you'll be more dissapointed in the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did. So what is your plan? How will you put a dent in the universe? I aim to be what Einstein said, “Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value.” All of us through the mundane of life can at least make a small difference in this world. Be kind. Smile. Choose Joy and may that joy beam from your heart enough to light up the darkest corner. Be couragous, encouraging, loving. Laugh and have fun! This life is a daring adventrue, one that I've not been living... but I will. I choose to.

"I don't know how much value I have in this universe, but I do know that I've made a few people happier than they would have been without me, and as long as I know that, I'm as rich as I ever need to be."

- Robin Williams