I hope everyone has had a great week so far. I want to take a few minutes this morning to pass on a few things that I think may be relevant to us all. I hope some of you can find a nugget or two in what I have to say useful and worthy of consideration. For the rest, well, sometimes even us BigFellas are allowed to think a bit too much.
My grandfather passed away on December 19th of 2012. One of the remarkable things I took from his funeral service was how full and complete his life seemed to have been; how somehow in the course of 86 years he had managed to tie up the loose ends of his existence and while he left a family behind it was not in a state of disarray or chaos. Sadly, however, I am left this morning with a stark contrast to that with the news of the passing of one of my father's closest friends. While this man didn't leave a house in disarray or a damaged family by any means, I find myself saddened by the things he left undone. This man left this world in the midst of unfulfilled plans for his family and community and while I'm sure his family will see what I'm sure will come to be his legacy to fruition, I find it a reason for pause.
BigFellas, we all lead hectic and crazy lives. We tend to get caught up in our deadlines with work or worries over our kids or whatever generic tedium interrupts our daily focus. Hey, it happens to the best of us. If you'll indulge me just a moment I'd like to share something I learned over the past year of unemployment. When any one area of your life becomes dominant and all consuming, the rest of it is going to get neglected - period. I was all about my job, no questions asked. Then one day it was gone. A couple of depressed weeks (okay months) later I woke up and realized that I had an entire life to live as well. It turns out that the old acorn about everything needing to have its place is really more like an oak tree in the long run.
So with all that being said, I encourage each of you today to take a moment and look at your own big picture. Look at that overall life and see what's really going on with your time on this rock. Are you paying attention to what is really the most important? If you passed suddenly today, what would your legacy be? I was doing a little reading the other day as research for a book and found out that one of the Norse traditions when it came to funerals is that very little was put on a headstone other than a name and maybe how old you were. They believed that it wasn't necessary because a persons' deeds and reputation should outlive them. If you weren't a remarkable person, why bother carving it in stone? That struck me as poignant before today's events and now even moreso.
The Big Picture. What your life is really about. The big ol' brass tacks.
RIP Mr. Norman Simpson.
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