Live Backward – January 07, 2007

The longer we live, the more we have occasion to attend the funerals of those who have been dear to us. During such memorial services, we are consoled by tributes to our departed loved ones. We listen to descriptions of their life, activities, and personality. These tributes are tender and sobering; they give us a chance to pause, to reflect, and to consider sincerely our own mortality. It’s been said that “if you want to know how to live your life, think about what you want people to say about you after you die—and live backward.”¹
 
If your loved ones and associates were asked to choose a few words to describe you, what words do you think they would choose? What would you want them to say? If we can live, in some measure, with this end in mind, it will become clear how we need to grow and what we must change.
Of course, we must all live in the present, but thinking about the end of our life can truly be a new beginning. Honest self-reflection is hard work; it’s not easy to acknowledge our flaws and foibles—and we all have a few. But growth will come to those who are open-hearted, humble, and willing to change. Like old Scrooge in Charles Dickens’s classic tale A Christmas Carol, we can look at where our life is headed and begin to become the kind of person we’d like to be.
Take a moment and seriously ponder what will be said of you. Consider where you want to end up, and live backward from there. Along the way, don’t miss the chance to express love, to be kind, to lift another, to look for the good. You’ll find that living backward can be the most meaningful way to go forward with life.
 
 
Program #4036
 
 
¹ In Michael Josephson, “Living with the Idea of Dying,” http://www.charactercounts.org/knxwk492.htm#5.