How Will The Value of Your Days Be Measured?

For each of us eventually, whether we are ready or not, someday it will come to an end.

There will be no more sunrises, moments, 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 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 on what side of the tracks you lived at the end. 

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 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 the 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. 

A life lived significantly is not one of circumstance as much as it is of un-faming dedication of choice, a life that touched and cured a dying and suffering humanity then and now.

Michael Casebier