To Live, To Love, To Learn, To Leave a Legacy

To Live -- survival
To Love-- relationships
To Learn—growth and development
To Leave a Legacy—meaning and contribution

As you may have noticed if you have perused my biographical sketch, one of the seminal books I have read that continues to influence the direction of my adult life is Stephen R. Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. A follow-up book, The 8th Habit, further develops our understanding of four great human needs, especially the last one, to Leave a Legacy or as the theme of the book, to develop what Covey calls ‘Voice.’ As I grow older I find myself more and more focusing on this one. This weblog, Omnium-Gatherum-Millerum, is an outgrowth of that need in my life.

The Biblical writer of Ecclesiastes says, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven… a time to be born, and a time to die…a time to heal…to build up…to dance…to lose…to keep…to keep silence, and a time to speak….” I read a book once: Black Elk Speaks. It was this great Native American’s legacy.

Though some of these human activities of Ecclesiastes may require, at times, almost undivided attention, I think that with planning and effort the four great human needs can be pursued contemporaneously. This has been a conscious goal of mine for the past 2/3 of my life.

I have begun to know a woman, a wonderful 98 year-old woman named Priscilla Nesbitt who lives in an assisted living home with my mother and several other fine women. Although she is very aged she has a wonderful mind and wit. Just today, as I was reading out loud to the women in the home she said to me, “I think it would be a wonderful thing to write a book like this and have it read.” (I was reading a 1944 novel, Winter Wheat, by Mildred Walker) To me, having known her for only a few months, I look at her as a living book. She was career teacher who, I am certain, wrote indelible lessons upon the tablets of the hearts and minds of her students for over three decades. She is leaving lessons with me each time I visit.

Priscilla Nesbitt has lived a long life—she is a survivor; she regularly tells me of how she loved her students—and her cats; she continues to learn—she reads constantly; and she is leaving a legacy with me without even trying.

My mother-in-law Beth Fischer is another 95-year-old plus who is cut of the same cloth. She has no middle name, but if I had my way it would be ‘Service.’

These women are an inspiration to me and to any who know them, and for that reason alone, if for no other, their lives have value and they are making a contribution as they endure to the end.

May God continue to bless them.