� 2001-2006 by Shiloh
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Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance. It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed. Your grudges, resentments, frustrations and jealousies will finally disappear.
So too, your hopes, ambitions, plans and to-do lists will expire. The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away. It won't matter where you came from or what side of the tracks you lived on in the end. It won't matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant. Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant.
So what will matter? How will the value of your days be measured? What will matter is not what you bought, but what you built; not what you got, but what you gave. What will matter is not your success, but your significance. What will matter is not what you learned, but what you taught. What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage or sacrifice that enriched, empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example.
What will matter is not your competence, but your character. What will matter is not how many people you knew, but how many will feel a lasting loss when you're gone. What will matter is not your memories, but the memories that live in those who loved you. What will matter is how long you will be remembered, by whom and for what.
Living a life that matters doesn't happen by accident. It's not a matter of circumstance but of choice. Choose to live a life that matters. It really matters.
Nothing matters, but our character. How true. We cannot take anything material with us when we die. And truly, it matters what our lasting effect on people left behind will be. That will be our ultimate success here on Earth, or our greatest failure. But I have to disagree that what we learn isn't important. It is. Our lives are made of what we learn. And what we learn affects what we teach and how we live our lives. Lessons also learned here (as well as memories made) pass on with us; we take what we know to our new existence. There, we add on to that learning, the new experiences adding onto old Earthly ones.
In this earthly life we have so many chances to start anew, to become a person of worth. But when we die, we lose the easiest chance of changing. For we take all our faults too when we die, and though I know nothing of how the next plane of existence is, I know it's going to be a wwwhhhoolle other ballpark. It's not corporeal like this, and so any addictions, flaws and weaknesses we have will be all the harder to overcome. So yes, choose wisely, for in choosing who you become now will affect others who live on after you and will determine how many flaws or weaknesses you will have to overcome in the next life.
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