being remembered | Tracks In The Dust

Archive for the tag “being remembered”

08 Jun 2012

Celebrate Milestones

Milestones.

Measuring the passing of things can sometimes bring sadness, because it serves as a reminder that we are all getting older. It’s a fact of life we cannot deny, and as long as we are alive on Earth it is a reality we will experience.

Over the years I have changed my view of things. When I was younger, milestones like birthdays, anniversaries, and those significant days that help to provide keepsakes that will live in our memories…were all fleeting by at a very high-speed. Perhaps friends and family would gather together, while other times life just got too busy to really make time to celebrate or pause. That seemed okay because after all it seemed, “it was just another day” on the calendar to mark time.

As I have gotten older (not “old” by-the-way) I have become much less cynical about the milestones, they need to be observed. They need to be cherished for the place they signify on the timeline of our lives. Sure some of that can generate melancholy that can just bring the tone down on the very thing we should be celebrating. But it doesn’t have to. And if we let it , we are missing an opportunity to be thankful for the occasion to count it. What are we observing/counting anyway?

Our milestones (however small or significant) are there to provide us the chance to remember. Remember the good, the bad, the joyful times and the struggles that we have lived through. It is part of life, so in fact we are celebrating life in all of its detail. We are also celebrating the people and loved ones in it, and that simple fact that God is there to surround you in the moments each and every minute of them.

So this weekend my wife and I will celebrate 33 years of marriage. I used to think that sounded like something just old people would be happy about, but I don’t consider myself “old”. I enjoy the same humor, same music, same movies, same books, same food, same need for relationships and life’s validation as my children and their friends. I can feel older since my body has certainly begun to show wear. I can know that I am wearing out because of a date on the calendar, but it is the collective experiences I have had over the last 33 years that make me the richer person for it. I love my wife and the children we raised as the most Earthly rewards either of us could ask for. I look forward to eternity with them someday.

I am also positive that someday it will end, and as someone who fights cancer everyday there are special anniversaries to celebrate with my loved ones and with God. They are everyday milestones. It’s the reason and need to keep going and enjoy the passage of time. Like the ads say “celebrate more birthdays”.

So it seems – everyone has milestones to pass along the calendar of our lives. Some we may not observe but should, others may pass with little celebration. For some souls, time is too short and they leave us behind to keep time. For those of us that get more – we need to grab hold of the minutes and make them be the best.

Here’s a song that says it all from one of my favorite musicals, RENT.

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life, Life's Sound Track (Music) and tagged Anniversaries, being remembered, cherish, choices, Compassion, God, Marriage, Memories, Milestones, relationships, Rent the musical, Seasons of Love, Slow Down

25 May 2012

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The Touch of Grace In Living

Just the other day someone who I hadn’t seen or talked to in ages happened to communicate with me online. I thought again how much the Internet has changed everyone’s lives in the “Information Age“. As part of our communication it was apparent that somewhere along our past journey I had said something that “stuck” with him and became part of his philosophy in life from that point on.

I didn’t recall saying anything to him that would be that profound, and frankly what I said must have been part of a conversation that I don’t recall now. What it was isn’t even that important to this posting. It did make me think again how much we are all interconnected by everything we do and say every day. Sometimes it may be with a stranger at the checkout line, or someone you meet on your walk with the dog. Other times it could be with those friendships and relationships you have with friends and relatives that pass through your timeline of life (I shudder when I look at my life as a “timeline”- thanks Facebook). It is more than the impact of reading a book, or watching a film, or listening to a song… it is human interaction.

But no matter how we intersect and no matter whether it is brief or an extended amount of time, there is always this chance that you or the other person may be changed by it. If even just in the smallest of ways; or sometimes in the most profoundly huge ways. It is part of God’s wish that we treat everyone that way and it is not always going to work because we often find ourselves centered on our selves. But even then, it can happen. That brush with action or words that can change everything after it.

There is a fictional TV show on US television these days called “Touch” that addresses the idea that much of our world and its actions are interconnected mathematically. There is even going to be a web-based online series based on it called “Daybreak2012”. I think people are guinely curious about their effect on others. Heck, that is likely at the core of many of the blog-sites we are all visiting online today.

Perhaps that is the hidden equation, perhaps it is more on a spiritual level – something that we all possess but often do not acknowledge or recognize we have.

At the end of our lives we may have touched so many people we didn’t ever realize we had. We may had said something or done something that made such a difference but we will never know because that person’s path will never cross ours again.

“There by the grace of God go I” to make my way into the world and leave something behind that is not just “tracks in the dust” that eventually fade away. Instead it is a chain reaction of things that I will not know during my lifetime. But I am excited to know in the next world.

Do you share in the excitement? Can you share in the grace of life?

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life, Learning Lessons Along the Journey Of Life and tagged being remembered, choices, Grace, Information Age, moments, People, Philosophy, Reality Check, religion, Self-Awareness, Sprituality, tracks in the dust

14 May 2012

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Your Love Story

My wife will tell you I am a sucker for a love story. Old movies in particular always showed up in my life since I was a kid. I used to watch the classics and the not so classic black and white movies from the 30s and 40’s every afternoon after I got home from school. Not very masculine I know…but the “arts” have been my life since I was a kid so it just stuck.

Even as I got older I kept watching. Compact 2 hours or less of a story about a man and woman in love, out of love, after someone else, coming back to the one they loved from the start. Sometimes they were musicals, sometimes dramas, some where what they call “rom-coms” these days, romantic comedies. They weren’t all good, some where predictable, sugary sweet, silly plots with little to do than filling up the time it took to watch it.

Yet some were works of art, with famous people like Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable. So many names that mean very little now to the young movie goers today. Yet as I grew older I remember falling in deep love with Ali McGraw in Love Story. Just because she dies at the end it made it all that harder to wonder what things would be like with someone like her.

The saying “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” became famous as the book and movie. The romantic notion that life is like a movie wasn’t passed on me. But I knew better. Life is more than that compact couple of hours. It has more ups and downs, and may not have those fateful meet-cute scenes where the star meets the starlet and they fall in/out/in love. And those silly mis-understandings that make up so many of the middle parts of the plot with that secret that the viewers know; and eventually the love interest will know and make for the happy ending. Or the sad one.

Love is more than that in the movies, it takes commitment beyond the final reel where Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan meet at the top of Empire State or in the park with Barkley (references you may not know if you don’t like these kind of movies). I have learned that- but then I always knew that even back when I was in grade-school watching those classics. It takes an effort to be in love, give and take, some good days and some bad. Creating memories and making plans. God willing you get enough time in your life to capture it and spend it wisely. Some days are diamonds, some days are stones. Some people say that it us all part of your own life’s movie, others are not so oblique- they don’t see it that way at all.

In the end, love means what ever you need it to. Not everyone ends up with the “girl” or Mr Right. But love does conquer all…well sometimes. And it can move mountains…maybe just not the mountain you want moved. You may meet the person of your dreams, or you may dream about the person you meet. The real Love Story’s are ours to make. Get out there and make them.

What is your favorite love story? Book or movie? The one that captures it for you. You have one? – share.

Posted in Learning Lessons Along the Journey Of Life and tagged Ali MacGraw, being remembered, Cary Grant, Clark Gable, entertainment, Favorite Movie, Love, Love Story, Memories, moments, Spencer Tracy, Tom Hanks

19 Feb 2012

Eternity Matters Most

When my wife’s father was coming to the last days of his life, one of the things he wanted to be sure would happen; that he would be remembered. A God-fearing man, he was kind-hearted and kind to all around him his entire life. But who would think of him after he was gone?

It seems so many people are striving to leave their mark on the world – and with such a noisy world jammed so full of ways to communicate in this Information Age, they are having to make more noise to get noticed in the frey. It could be such simple things…but unfortunately like the headlines today seem to scream, many find such self-centered ways by finding their way to public venues with guns and statements. While others grieve the passing of fallen popular figures as an epic passing that serves as a never forgotten milestone to the time we have here. Many others just want to be remembered for their kindness or generosity. But often that is just a whisper in comparison.

No matter how someone might be remembered, or for how long on this Earth they will have a part in someone’s elses life of remembrance, there will be a time when that will disappear too. What is left is where you believe you will once you have taken the last breath here on Earth. Is there another breath elsewhere, is there eternity? It is the most important part of living, it is knowing that it matters most. And being good with that.

Memories will come and go, like the proverbial tracks in the dust. Generations will continue to build upon generations until the end of human time. When we live in this world, the very short time we exist will be ours to invest. Perhaps not to invest in being “remembered” but in doing our best to assure that others know what matters most. It is what is beyond our time here. So while we are here, we must learn to enjoy the passage of time. It is the secret of life.