HERE TODAY, FORGOTTEN TOMORROW
Chances are good you do not know the names of your great grandparents. Perhaps you do, but do you know the names of your great-great grandparents? Most do not. Truth is, they are long forgotten. And one day the same will be true of you and me.
One day we will die, someone will sprinkle a bit of dirt on our grave, and the few who knew us will mourn our passing, until they one day pass on as well. Within 120 years everyone on who is currently alive on this earth will experience death.
So far, this is a cheerful blog, isn’t it?
It’s not often I ponder death, and even less frequently dwell on my own death. When I do, I consider not just my death, but the one life I have been given. I ask questions like, “What, for me, is success?” and “What am I really after?” and “What do I want people to say about me when they stand over my grave?”
For many of us we live for such short-term goals - things that will never give us what we truly long for. Consider our culture that is deeply obsessed with fame. I am in the midst of reading The Beckham Experiment. It outlines the glory and struggle of David Beckham coming to the United States to play in the MLS. Central to the story is our fame-obsessed culture. In fact, that’s what made the Beckham coming to America thing work.
And I do not believe any of us are immune to it.
We obsess over famous people, and down deep inside have hopes of getting there ourselves. But for what? A few minutes in the midst of life when people tell us we are great? Then what? Let’s not forget there are few people who transcend time and become lasting icons. In fact, there are millions of famous, great and wonderful people who have been totally forgotten.
I told you this was a cheerful blog.
Looking at life this way can give us much-needed help to understand how cheap fame, success and fortune really are. When this happens we are freed to live fully in the present. We are freed to not entangle ourselves in the climbing the ladder of glory of fame and fortune. We can live each day, and do the next right thing. It’s tremendously simple, but unbelievably difficult.
When we pursue the glory of fame and wild success in this world we run the risk of only inheriting the things that we have gained here on this earth. There are those who have had it all, but, in the end, they are forgotten.
Which raises the question for each of us that’s worth asking often: “How would you live today if you knew that tomorrow you would be completely forgotten?”