My Dash

I read a poem a couple of years ago called the Dash by Linda Ellis. This poem has become a moving force in my life. My wife gave me a book two Christmas's ago based on the poem from www.simpletruths.com.

The Dash
By Linda Ellis

I read of a man who stood to speak
at the funeral of a friend
He referred to the dates on her tombstone
from the beginning... to the end

He noted that first came the date of her birth
and spoke of the following date with tears,
but he said what mattered most of all
was the dash between those years

For that dash represents all the time
that she spent alive on earth
and now only those who loved her
know what that little line is worth

For it matters not, how much we own
the cars...the house...the cash
What matters is how we live and love
and how we spend our dash.

So think about this long and hard:
Are there things you'd like to change?
For you never know how much time is left
that can still be rearranged

if we could just slow down enough
to consider what's true and real
and always tries to understand
the way other people feel

And be less quick to anger
and show appreciation more
and love the people in her lives
like we've never loved before

If we treat each other with respect
and more often wear a smile...
remembering this special dash
might only last a little while

So when your eulogy is being read
with your life's actions to rehash.
would you be proud of the things they say
about how you spent your dash

Most of us live our lives in a hustle bustle of running here and there for our own gains. We don't necessarily think of others. We hear about people who have made huge differences in the lives of others, these are people who have learned to live their dashes. Our lives are short with respect to the length of history and we have to make our marks on lives. We can't all be Shakespeare's, or Mozart's who have left marks for centuries to come, but we can make the lives of those around us a little more memorable.

Last year at Thanksgiving I challenged each of my family to write a thank you note to a person who has made a difference in their lives in the last year. I even did this myself, and the response I gt back from the person I wrote to was very touching.
I even put this idea forth in a letter to the editor in the local paper and the response to the editorial was a letter from an elderly couple who recently moved away to be closer to their children warmed my heart. Our dash could be pretty lonely if all we do is live our lives for ourselves. If instead we put the thoughts and feelings of others in a prominent place in our lives, then our short stay on this planet we call home becomes a much nicer place. There was a movie several years ago called "Pay It Forward" where the premise was to do something nice for a person and rather than have them return the favor to us you request they pay it forward to seven people. Then those seven pay it forward to seven others and so on and so on. Can you imagine how fast it would spread though the world if people took this seriously.

I am trying t live my dash in such a way I can be proud of what I left behind, and my children can be prud to say that I was their Dad. I struggle to live my dash each and every day to its fullest because we never know when that dash will come to its end. We recently had a tragedy in our little community where two kids of a very prominent family died in a tragic snow mobile accident. Their dashes were cut extremely short as one was barely out of his teens and his cousin was only in third grade. It makes you think about how short our brief lives can really be, and we have to make the most of it. So how do you plan to live your dash? Will it be a life filled with love and compassion, and love for your fellow man?