"If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing." –Benjamin Franklin
I've written here at Little Nuances several times about leaving a legacy. And I certainly think that writing is a great way to do it, but when I read the quote above by Benjamin Franklin recently, I think he makes a great point about doing "things worth the writing." Writers who sit behind a desk all day without every experiencing life speak in the abstract, and they become stale, and eventually they are empty. Words flow out of life, not the other way around.
This is always a struggle for me when I'm writing under deadline. Sometimes, I have to say no to invitations to hang out with people I'd love to hang out with. My leisurely reading time is diminished. I lose track of current events. And toward the end of the project, I feel a desperate need to reconnect. I scramble to get caught up on e-mail, to send out birthday cards, and to return calls. And I get the bug to invest in young people again by teaching at church or by simply spending time with my niece.
I'm not sure if the "things worth the writing" that Franklin spoke about involves such day to day activities or not, but I suspect that I'll be remembered for the person I was as I went about such activities, rather than some of the other "bigger" endeavors I've attempted. The thing about big endeavors is that you seldom have control over their success. You put in the hard work and hope that somebody catches the vision. But those little endeavors—the things we often take for granted—those are the things we can control. And they often seem to outlast the big things.
