WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR DASH?
If there's one thing this high-heeled fashionista loves, it's luncheons where the Manolos can come out of the closet and see the light of day. Some luncheons are just too "lunchy,"-- filled with nice, benign conversations over rubber chicken covered in some kind of goop, and bread hard enough to cause a concussion if it hit someone.
Today's luncheon of the week was anything but that. SL had plenty to ponder after the speaker talked about that dash we'll have decorating our tombstone someday. The dash between our birth date and our date of death is truly life's most important punctuation mark. She challenged the audience of women entrepreneurs to ask, "What are you doing with your dash?" Now that's really some food for thought!
Steve Jobs' dash, one would expect, would be long and thick, reflecting someone who had filled that dash to the brim with life-altering technology that made lives better in endless ways. Evelyn Lauder's 75 years would be a beautiful, colorful, long dash drawn for not only her contributions to the beauty industry, but also to breast cancer research with her endless support for finding a cure.
I'd like to think my dash would be long on making a difference in at least one life along the way, and that it would probably have a few cracks here and there for the stumbles, failures, mended fences, and a broken heart or two. Interestingly, if you look really, really closely at the dash on a headstone, it's not a razor sharp line. It waves slightly, microscopically, in the marble, granite or cement tombstone it sits in. Rather like our lives, that aren't so perfect, but meaningful nevertheless.
Every day I plan to challenge myself and ask, "What am I doing with my dash today?" How can I fill it up, make it strong, make it matter.
Something to think about before that dash is carved in stone.
Today's luncheon of the week was anything but that. SL had plenty to ponder after the speaker talked about that dash we'll have decorating our tombstone someday. The dash between our birth date and our date of death is truly life's most important punctuation mark. She challenged the audience of women entrepreneurs to ask, "What are you doing with your dash?" Now that's really some food for thought!
Steve Jobs' dash, one would expect, would be long and thick, reflecting someone who had filled that dash to the brim with life-altering technology that made lives better in endless ways. Evelyn Lauder's 75 years would be a beautiful, colorful, long dash drawn for not only her contributions to the beauty industry, but also to breast cancer research with her endless support for finding a cure.
I'd like to think my dash would be long on making a difference in at least one life along the way, and that it would probably have a few cracks here and there for the stumbles, failures, mended fences, and a broken heart or two. Interestingly, if you look really, really closely at the dash on a headstone, it's not a razor sharp line. It waves slightly, microscopically, in the marble, granite or cement tombstone it sits in. Rather like our lives, that aren't so perfect, but meaningful nevertheless.
Every day I plan to challenge myself and ask, "What am I doing with my dash today?" How can I fill it up, make it strong, make it matter.
Something to think about before that dash is carved in stone.
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