Sunday, August 12, 2012

Legacy Wishes


During the last several years while looking for a job, I've been challenged over and over again to think about what I want to do with my life.  I am asked, what work would inspire me to jump out of bed everyday excited to be alive.  A myriad of employment gurus encourage me to think about what my goals are for the next 2, 5, 10, 20 years...Heck, I'll be happy if I'm not in a rocker by then.  My goals right now are to get up everyday and do something positive.  I've categorically been unable to speak to what my driving passion is, what my life goals are, what do I want to do.  Refusing to box myself in with only one thing to do or be passionate about, I've kept my options open.  Life is exciting, there are many things which spark my curiosity, engage my mind and creativity which I would love to have the time to pursue. 


However, when a person recently asked me what legacy I would want to leave behind when I left this physical world...I paused.   This question caught my attention for whenever I think of my legacy my mind flies away into the upper stratosphere.  That is the place where perfection, pure thought and purpose hang outOf course, I want to leave a legacy, don't we all?  So, I started thinking.



I want to leave a legacy of love, good will, kindness, giving and gratitude.  As I float down from the cloud of hyperbole to more solid ground, my mind and gut say that when I "shake off this earthly mantle", I would like my friends and family at least to think kindly of me and smile, then laugh while reminiscing about things we've done together. My kids don't ask for much and they don't have much but the personalities they were born with and maybe my curiosity.  So, any legacy I leave, I'd like to have include money.  Hopefully, enough to give some to my kids, friends and to organizations I like which are doing good.  Enough to send the grand kids on journeys to find themselves and their passion in life and give them experiences that will help them become people of honor and empathy.  Maybe these journeys would be to college, maybe to Bangladesh...who knows.  Some too for fighting poverty, hunger and hatred.


 Mostly, I think I want to leave my grand kids, kids and friends the sure knowledge that their dreams are what drive them and if those dreams get subverted or ignored by the humdrum of everyday living, then they will never really be happy nor will they reach their true potential.  



  And with this in mind my brain floats up again to the stratosphere and thinks of all the millions of people experiencing want right now...I think of all that potential going to waste... I think how easy it would be to encourage and inspire them to greatness with a little kindness and hope and I wish heartily upon that first star on the right straight out past midnight that the universe will shower upon me a boatload of cash.  Why? Because I would leave a legacy of good in my path...as I slide into the darkness with a Margarita in one hand, Handel's ice cream cone in the other yelling...WHOOOO HOOOO look out eternity!!!.