The One Thing In Our Lives That Defines Everything Else

Photo by David Ragusa on Unsplash

Have you ever gone to a graveyard by yourself?

Most people have stood near or in front of a tombstone at some point in their lives. The rest of you will end up at a graveyard at some point in your life. It’s not a morbid thought, but a reality of life. There is a headstone in all of our futures.

If you find yourself in a graveyard, you’ll notice the silence. There are no promotions, no microphones, no newsletters, and no crowds. There is no hurry. No bustling around, no phone calls, no “let me send that last email.” There are no trophies to be seen among the lines and lines of tombs.

But there are a few things that you will find in every graveyard. Dirt. Dates. And a dash.

We get the idea of the dirt. Time is the great equalizer. Times make the worries of man seem dainty and the strains of life seem trivial. When we pass, we take nothing with us — the dirt wins every battle.

We also understand the idea of the dates. Everyone gets two dates that will sum up the entirety of your life. You have very little to no control over either of them.

No one controls when they are born. No one gets a say in when, how, where, or who brings you into this world. And very few people will ever truly control when they die. While our lifestyle and the choices we make can impact the percentages and odds of how long we may have on Earth, we rarely have control over when our day will come.

But there is a third thing that is in every graveyard and cemetery, something that contains the true secret of life and all of its richness and beauty: the dash.

If you walk down the rows and look at every tombstone, you’ll see a dash. That hyphen is the totality of your life, from the moment you were born until the moment you take your last breath. Everything you do on this planet is compressed into that short type-face character, that hyphen.

That’s what you get to control. That’s what you get to speak into and influence and create. You may not get to define your dates but you get to define your hyphen.

Only by focusing on your hyphen, you can set out to live your best life, to live your life to the very fullest it can be.

Beginnings

A lot of people get hung up on their beginnings. They let the first date define the narrative of their life. Have you ever met someone like this?

Getting stuck on your beginnings looks a lot like consistently making excuses based on where or what you came from. That’s not to say that there aren’t situations or circumstances that create certain advantages or disadvantages. It just means that where you come from doesn’t have to define who you are.

You are the person in control of your narrative — not your past. You may have come from a hard neighbourhood, you may have been raised by a single-parent. You may have been adopted or have other examples of difficult and emotionally traumatic experiences from your childhood.

All of these beginnings are real. They have consequences that affect us throughout the rest of our lives. But just because they are real, they don’t have to define our hyphen moving forward.

If you hold on too hard to the past, you’ll never grow into who you were meant to be.

Endings

There are also people on the opposite end of the spectrum — people who are so focused on their endings that they are let the idea of their future-self drive and dictate their current actions.

Have you ever met someone who was so afraid of dying that they practically refused to live in the moment? Or the inverse - someone who was so oblivious to the finality of life’s ending that they were reckless in the day-to-day?

We aren’t meant to live as people fixated on the future. But we’re also not meant to just throw away our lives because we fail to realize that life doesn’t last forever.

Getting stuck in either of these two traps makes it difficult for both life and enjoy the fullness of your life at the moment. It makes it hard to truly soak up all there is to love about your hyphen and the season you are in right now.

The hyphen

If you woke up today, that is a gift. Do you realize that you didn’t have to wake up? When your alarm went off and you opened your eyes, you were waking up to one more opportunity to live enjoy and make the most of your hyphen.

When you lay down to bed tonight, tomorrow isn’t guaranteed. When you leave your house and get in your car to drive to work, you aren’t promised that you’ll make it to your destination.

If you want to make the most of your hyphen, cherish your moments. Don’t let negative emotions take control for too long. Don’t let anxieties about things beyond your control weigh you down and make you sink.

Practice gratitude. Encourage people around you because they may be the ones who tell your story and share about your hyphen after you’re gone. Love deeply and forgive quickly. Don’t let bitterness take root. Smile as much as you can. Laugh whenever possible.

Ask people great questions. Listen more than you talk. Be vulnerable and open and willing to be yourself. Admire great men and women. Appreciate fine things. Have your own tastes and your own dreams and your own hopes.

Make the most of the hyphen. If you do that, if you focus on that dash, you’ll leave way more behind than just another pile of dirt in front of a white-washed headstone. You’ll leave behind a legacy.