What Does Your Dash Mean?

            The other day I was looking at some of my family’s genealogy online and I saw some information on my grandfather. He was born in 1910 and died in 1979.  I had watched a video earlier that talked of the “dash” being the important part of a person’s life. As I looked at my grandfather’s 1910 – 1979, I realized how true that statement was. My dash is still in progress and I started to think about what I wanted it to represent.

             Grandpa’s dash represented a life filled with beekeeping, children, a wife, and farming. To me, his dash meant hard work and living his dream of owning and working the land. Now that he has an end number after his dash, I wish I had been able to spend more time with him in order to save up more memories.

            What will my own dash mean to my children and grandchildren? Will they remember it as years of complaining about my job and the many bad decisions I made? I don’t want that and since we always seem to remember the last thing we learned, I still have some time to change, time to make it better.

            Change, however, isn’t easy and it doesn’t happen overnight. The story of Ebenezer Scrooge doesn’t follow the old man past his first day as a changed person, so we will never know if the change stuck. No doubt he would still have had many obstacles to overcome and many bad habits to break. The key for all of us is to never give up. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth taking the time and doing it right.

            My grandfather created a wonderful dairy farm which gave me memories to last a lifetime. From milking the cows early in the morning to feeding the calves with huge baby bottles, they’re all good memories. He didn’t do all that for me, but I received more from it than he probably ever knew. My mother and father created a wonderful garden, which still produces an abundance of food each year. That little bit of Eden will be part of their dashes.

             So what can I create that will be important to later fruits of my loin? (Children- for you non-bible folk) It doesn’t have to be anything big like Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel or even like my grandfather’s dairy farm. It just needs to be something created by me and that I’m willing to share with my posterity. The most important thing is that it has to come from my heart.

            Your passion is your dash between when you were born and when you die. Find your dash, follow you dream, and make your dash something to be proud of. No one will ever remember a life filled with TV watching and couch sitting. Write, draw, build, create, even fix! Get up and make your dash worthwhile.

            Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you. – Thomas Jefferson