What Will Matter

I was reminding Yoga Kid about my favourite poem and she actually posted it on her blog last night. In lieu of anything original to write about tonight myself, I'm doing the same.

WHAT WILL MATTER

Michael Josephson

Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end.

There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days.
All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten
will pass to someone else.

Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance.
It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed.
Your grudges, resentments, frustrations
and jealousies will finally disappear.
So too, your hopes, ambitions, plans and to-do lists will expire.
The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away.

It won’t matter where you came from
or what side of the tracks you lived on at the end.
It won’t matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant.
Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant.

So what will matter?
How will the value of your days be measured?

What will matter is not what you bought
but what you built, not what you got but what you gave.

What will matter is not your success
but your significance.

What will matter is not what you learned
but what you taught.

What will matter is every act of integrity,
compassion, courage, or sacrifice
that enriched, empowered or encouraged others
to emulate your example.

What will matter is not your competence
but your character.

What will matter is not how many people you knew,
but how many will feel a lasting loss when you’re gone.

What will matter is not your memories
but the memories that live in those who loved you.

What will matter is how long you will be remembered,
by whom and for what.

Living a life that matters doesn’t happen by accident.
It’s not a matter of circumstance but of choice.

Choose to live a life that matters.

Change

Is hard.

I had an intense session with therapist today followed by a 90 minute massage therapy appointment, topped off with a really awesome women's recovery meeting this evening. Talk about mood swings.

I'm going to bed. But I'm taking hope with me.

I Forgot to Mention

In addition to wanting to figure out my real purpose in life, I want desperately to be a writer. I write a lot in my professional and academic lives (no, they are not one and the same, but that is a story for another day) but I want to write, and only write, for my living. For now, writing is the newest of my three ongoing careers, and the one that pays the least. Well, okay. It pays nothing. But I believe people when they say "do what you love, and the money will come." I am not in a panic.

It does occur to me as I sit here at 7:30 in the morning that there is a very good likelihood that the money never will come, if I don't finish my writing projects. This space could be a journal of self discovery, and nothing more, if nobody ever follows me. In the same way that I really want people to like me, I really want people to like my writing. On a point of practicality, I know that I need to figure out how to tag my posts to attract people to this blog. But to start, I am fine with talking to myself.

My morning ritual looks something like this, minus the personal toiletry activities: check my work Blackberry, make a cup of tea (creamed earl grey, if you haven't tried it, you are robbing yourself), start worrying about what to wear to the office, and flip open a book of daily meditations or pull a card from an inspirational deck of something or other. Lately I like to pull from a beautifully illustrated deck of Grace cards created by self-care expert Cheryl Richardson. So, here goes.

The card I just picked is "Chance", and it reads:

"Take the leap. Divine protection is always by our side."

Which is kind of fitting. This blog is my leap.