Blog Prompt Friday: What do you sense you're supposed to do before your life is over?
Most people probably have a burning desire for one particular project or activity that they feel like they were put on earth to accomplish. Maybe it's to write a novel, or to be a great parent, or to start a business, or to be a missionary. While I'm passionate about writing fiction and would love to have a novel published, I don't sense that it's the primary goal of my life that needs to be accomplished before my life is over.
Instead, I sense that I'm supposed to do a lot of little things well. To be a son who honors his parents. To be an uncle who is available for his nieces. To be a brother who somehow enriches the lives of his siblings. To be a friend who puts the needs of his friends ahead of his own. To be a church member who is willing to adhere to all of the "one anothers" that can be found throughout scripture. And to be a productive member of society.
Have I succeeded? I doubt it. If you asked each one of these groups of people, they'd probably tell you that I've failed them at some point—probably when I was busy trying to live out my own desires and dreams—like working on my novels to the detriment of these relationships.
Everybody is conscious of his or her legacy. We all want to be remembered for certain things. But, the older I get, the less convinced I am that legacies are built when people are consciously focused on their legacy. Just think about the specifics of your own family. If you had to name your grandparent's legacy, what would it be? Their faithfulness to keep the family together in spite of the many rifts? Their insistence that you spent Christmas together? Their steadfastness in watching and training grandchildren? Their retelling of family stories fifteen hundred times—so much so, that you'll never forget them? It's all of those things, isn't it? And many more.
I love the idea that one of my novels might be read many years after I'm gone. But the reality is, most novels end up in the bargain bin a few years after they are published, and unless a novel does really well, it fades into the oblivion of backlists or goes out of print rather quickly. And even if I have an entire closet full of them with the hopes that my current and future family members will read them after I'm gone, that's just not realistic. Closets often become the victims of spring cleaning. And the contents of full closets periodically are moved to full basements that are subject to mold, and water damage, and dust. And after a person dies, many of those boxes are discarded without a second thought.
The more I think about what I'm supposed to do before my life is over, the less I want those particular actions to be contained in a box that may or may not ever be opened by another person. That won't stop me from attempting to get novels published, but hopefully it'll help me to lay that work aside when I have the chance to meet the needs of people in my life.
