October 8, 2007

Ready Or Not, Some Day It Will All Stop


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 on what side of the tracks you lived,
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.

Michael Josephson

3 comments:

The13th said...

Cool clock! Lovely poem. I was inspired to debate the fourth from last stanza about memory, which led to today's post.

Anonymous said...

In the theme of what we leave behind, here is a short poem I wrote.

Flight of the Hummingbird

Like life itself she ended,
Leaving phosphorescent feathers
In my palm
Held together with but a sigh,
An unsuspecting fragment
Of ions gone by.

Nicole

The13th said...

Very nice, Nicole.