The Summer Solstice came and went and so the weather changed direction too. Here we are in July! Who’d ever have thought.
This last week I’ve been contacted by not only listeners who heard me on Solent and Surrey/Sussex last weekend but regular guests to the programme. Only yesterday I asked Ian Shirley – the editor of the Rare Record Guide and a popular contributor to the programme when people wanted their records valued – to do a slot for the World Service about the revival of vinyl. It seems that sales of CDs and streaming are falling but good old fashioned LPs are so popular that Sony in Japan is starting pressing plants again because of bottlenecks worldwide. The market is said to be worth £1 billion a year and a Canadian company is setting up a plant in Portsmouth with brand new technology.
Then Louise from PetrolPrices turned up promoting her new app which helps people plan parties and social gatherings at the tap of a button.
Robin Lown, a reliable palmist, also popped up; but alas his news wasn’t as jolly as the others. He told me that so many people he knew were passing over this year. As synchronicity would have it, I then read a great blog by a chap called Michael Josephson. He had the following to say about the subject and I thought you’d like it.
He said that in his book, When Everything You Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough, Harold Kushner writes: “Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth, or power. Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so that our lives matter, so that the world will be at least a little bit different for our having passed through it.”
To help illustrate this he offers this story:
Ben just came to town as a new priest. Unfortunately, his first official duty was to conduct a funeral service for Albert, a man who died in his eighties with no relatives. Since Ben didn’t know the deceased personally, he paused from his sermon to ask if anyone in the congregation would say something good about Albert. There was no response.
Ben asked again:
“Many of you knew Albert for years, surely someone can say something nice.”
After an uncomfortable pause, a voice from the back of the room said:
“Well, his brother was worse.”
If you died tomorrow, what would people say about you?
Would it make you proud of the way you lived and the choices you made? Thinking about the legacy we leave can help us keep our priorities straight. Few people would be satisfied with an epitaph like:
“She always got what she wanted.” Or:
“He never missed a deadline.”
There’s an old saying, “If you want to know how to live your life, think about what you’d like people to say about you after you die . . . and live backwards.” The idea is that we earn our eulogy by our everyday choices.
Remember, character counts.
With that in mind here’s a longer than usual Mellow Moment which, when listened to on stereo headphones, can get us in tune with a whole different level of being. Just close your eyes, treat yourself to a long chill out and set yourself up for the coming week.
How are you going to live your life in the next few days so that you would be proud of the choices you made and the difference you made in people’s lives?
Business image created by Jcomp – Freepik.com
Thank you Mike for a lovely MMM.