What do you think of when you hear something like “Live your dash”? My immediate thought was about how I live life — dashing around, being involved with many things, and hurrying and scurrying.
Nope. It’s essentially about how you live your life. Your “dash” is that little horizontal line between the year you were born and the year you die. It’s a little line but it’s not a little thing. How are you going to fill that space?
You hear suggestions like to write the obit you’d like to have read at your funeral or published in the paper after your death, or live the life you will be proud of at the end of your life. Questions like “what regrets do you want to avoid at the end?” You see movies about the bucket or life list people are living, or wish they had lived.
What good deeds will you have shared? What hurtful things will you have laid on people? What goals will you have reached and celebrated? What shameful thing will you want to make amends for? What fun will you have had? What dreams will you have lived? What legacy are you living — and leaving — between birth and death?
The statement “Live your dash” has given me something powerful to think about, a goal to strive for. Goal? Yes, the goal of living a life I’ll be proud of daily, one of meaning and contribution. I’m going to stay as healthy as I can and live with as much vigor and vitality as I can. I’m going to slide into home plate, knowing I lived a home-run-life.
You? How are you going to live your dash?