Recently a friend from church told me that he had arrived at a great insight. He realized that one day he will just be a face on a wall of his descendants.
We all have faces on our walls or in our photo albums of people that we knew and loved that are no longer with us. Perhaps your children know who they are, but do your grandchildren? Will your great-grandchildren and beyond?
It is surely true of us that we will also one day be a face on a wall. This prompted my friend to write a document (you can call it a book if you like) where he reflected on his life. He wrote his memories about his grandparents, parents, and his own life experiences. In his words, “It is no masterpiece.” I beg to differ. I think to his descendants who will one day tie his words to his face on the wall it will indeed be a masterpiece.
What about you? First of all, what kind of story are you writing and living that embraces the reality of your own mortality? That is what Forward Story is really all about. Then, what can you do to ensure that those who follow in your footsteps know something about you and the kind of life you lived? What can you do to give them more than just your face in a frame on a wall?
Thanks to Forest for sharing this perspective.
So true. We have a lot of those faces on walls and in boxes. We haven’t been able to ID many of them, and others we can identify but our kids and grandkids can’t. I’m so thankful that my dad was a writer and left behind his story. I guess it’s time to get to work on mine.
Yes, it is time! I have some other ideas that I will be sharing soon for ways to do this that are (potentially) not as onerous as writing it all down might be. You will know what I am talking about when you think of the audio recordings we did years ago of Floyd and Ailene 🙂