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Rethinking Life
I can’t think of anything I like better than interviewing people. I never prepare questions, I never have.
People often ask me “what are you going to ask me?”
I find that such an interesting question because until you start opening doors and dishing out bits and pieces of your life, how do I know?
Im, in Oregon working on a video for the family of Ross Murry. Ross was one of those guys who grew up poor, dirt poor and made something of himself.
He knew how to read people and how to seal the deal.
The mark he left touched many and his family wants the generations who follow to better understand where the Murry legacy started.
As I’m interviewing people I often reflect on my own life.
I ask myself questions like: “What is the legacy I’m leaving behind?”
“How much balance is in my life or am I too focused on things that 100 years from now no one will give a damn about?”
I find in talking with people the big things we do are often forgettable but the moments of kindness leave strong memories and make bigger differences.
Culture often rewards the financial wealth as a sign of success but after interviewing both rich and poor I find simplicity and our ability to align with it, truly measure the success of the human being.
I’m not a guy who spends much time thinking about what people will say about me when I’m dead. I’m not gonna care, I’ll be dead.
And besides, as we’ve seen in recent years, cultural norms change and in a moment ones motives and life’s work can be canceled and the dead have no voice to correct or explain, their rebuttal silenced by sleeps dark and silent gate.
As I interview each person I think to myself, “I wonder if they knew how much impact they had on this person while they were alive or did they miss it in details that today don’t matter?”
Each one of us is writing the story of our lives. We can do it focusing on what we want people to see and use our “monetary worth” as a yardstick to measure how well we lived.
But what if instead, we can focus on how we treat those around us in those little moments right now.
It’s so easy to get distracted by what we think we have to do.
How much time do we spend worrying about tomorrow when there is enough life today to be lived?
Someday, someone might be interviewing someone about you or me.
What will they remember?
Will it be the things you did, what you made or will it be the way you made them feel in those little moments.
It’s never too late to change our story.
It’s never too late to add a chapter or switch direction.
Looks like it’s time to bring out the red marker and do a little editing.
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Rick:
I have found that all my public volunteerism in Government and economic development is fleeting. A project or opinion is lost in time and the ever-changing priorities of the next volunteer group, and over time no one remembers who did or said what. In our furniture refinishing/repair business, Stauffers Refinishing, there is preserving memories and the past. In our 43 years of work, we have not become "famous", and we do our work in relative obscurity, gaining clients by word of mouth. What we do for folks touches them on an emotional level and we leave behind with them something tangible that is remembered and cherished by the generations. This isn't a "get rich" occupation but one that gives…