“Whatever good things we build end up building us.”
– Jim Rohn (1930-2009), American businessman
Legacies tend to be visualized on a really big canvas. Legacies tend to be established only near the finish line of life or careers.
In fact, legacies tend to be celebrated as the end of an era — or maybe even the end of a lifetime.
Unless we set out to leave a daily legacy.
As a kid growing up on the farm, I never understood the incredible patience, trust and Faith that it took to put thousands of dollars of seed and fertilizer in the ground and then just drive away on your tractor — hoping to heck it didn’t flood, or burn out or mold in the ground. Decades later, though, I can literally smell the diesel exhaust and the freshly turned soil. I can feel the dust in the air and hear the hum of the engine. And I realize that a farmer’s legacy is the work he put in that day.
Looking forward and trying to imagine a legacy leaves us little time for being here, now, in this day.
Looking back to realize the legacy that we’ve built, one day, one interaction at a time, it is easier to know, definitively, that the good things we’ve built are who we are – and who we are becoming.
When we focus on those good things, and we set out to build anew each day — those who would tear down what we built in the past not only can’t tear down who we are, they can’t even keep us from building a better us, in this day.
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