What You Leave Behind

What You Leave Behind

How do you want to leave this earth?

With four cars in the driveway? A wall of college degrees, proving all your accumulated knowledge? A treasury of money and investments the size of Fort Knox?

Like the most powerful, richest civilizations of ancient Egypt and Rome, all the things you’ve accumulated will one day be bits of stone and dust. What will outlast you—both in the generations that follow and in the life beyond—is not what you collect but what you give.

What you give of your time, your money, your talents, your knowledge—this can be your lasting heritage. What you give will both empty and fill you. It will challenge and refine you. It will mold you into becoming a human being of true worth and substance.

You can start making your plans for departure now. Plan to leave this earth with nothing to show but a legacy that matters.

We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.

—anonymous