You Get One Chance At This Thing Called Life!

After a long hard weekend of dealing with “stuff” I am totally drained. I know that when I am handed a situation that I take on more of it than I should, but that is who I am. I don’t necessarily want to fix it, but I want to help those who are involved to work their way through it.

I have been thinking about some young adults that are connected to me through family and visualizing their lives 20 years from now. As to whether I am here to see that depends on when I am called to go home.

I guess what I have been able to grasp is that we get one shot at this thing called life. How we handle ourselves and those connected to us will be the legacy that we leave behind. I think about several celebrity stars that have already left this physical world. There are singers such as Elvis and Michael Jackson. What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear their name? Then there is Mother Theresa, and my not so famous grandmothers Virgie Nivens and Euna Gowdy. I think about the legacy they have left behind. Mother Theresa had such a passion for those in poverty. I just get a little overwhelmed when I think about all that she did while here for her span of life (1910-1997) on this earth. I think about my grandma Gowdy (1904-2002). She and Papaw gave birth to 5 children, 12 grandchildren, and a host of great, and great-great grandchildren. Their legacy lives on… and on….and on.¬ I sometimes wonder if I do justice to living up to my heritage. I know that my grandparents were very well known in their community. They supported their church, helped out their neighbors and worked in their community. They knew how to work hard, how to plan and have fun and when to take time to rest.
I look at the high tech world that we have evolved into and I wonder if we truly know how to do these things. We go to work, play more on Facebook than we work, grab a quick lunch (inhale what we call fast food!) shuffle through the afternoon and hurry to get home before the traffic has us locked in! We go home, change into comfy clothes and collapse and just want to veg-out! Now that is the good life, right?
Our week consists of 168 hours, minus approximately 56 hours to sleep. If you work 40 hours and just add 10 for commute we have approximately 60 hours to do something with. Bear with me, my point is that we have a lot of hours to do something in our lives that will be what we leave as our legacy. As I start to peel back the onion and we start to discover who we are, I will start with 56 hours of sleep. I don’t want to be harsh, but who do you sleep with? Are you single and therefore sleep by yourself? Are you married and you get to curl up next to your one and only, the one you made a commitment to be with for the rest of your life? I will leave it up to you as to what the other options are.

As we move through the day, we work approximately 8-9 hours a day. Let me clarify that, we are at work 8-9 hours a day. Questions arise as to how much of that time is actually spent “working”. Do you see yourself giving your best to this time? I believe in having fun and enjoying work, but FB isn’t work! Integrity used to be a quality that we all worked to have as a part of our resume. I don’t know if that word still exists as criteria for getting a job, or does it just come into play when something is missing!
As I think about the hours that we continue to fill our time with, that is what we are leaving as a legacy. If I spend time with my spouse, time with the needy, time with children ( mine or not mine), time with elderly, time in the bar, time with the slot machines, time with buddies, all of this adds up to who I am and what I am leaving behind.
You get one chance at this. Don’t blow it by spending time in places where no one really knows who you are, no one really cares who you are or when you will come back. Spend your time wisely with those you love and those who care if you come and go in their lives. Those are the people who will allow your legacy to live on after you are gone. They are the ones who will tell stories about you and laugh and cry when you are no longer physically here to be a part of those stories.