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I bought two bricks.
One will be at Disneyland. The other at Mission San Jose High School. After we pay the brick sellers, they'll carve "Richards Family" into the Disneyland one and "Kylene Megan Richards, Class of 2004" into the MSJ one. Then they'll cement them into the ground for eternity.
It's kind of like paying for graffiti. Legal, high quality graffiti.
We humans have an innate desire to be recognized and remembered. Which at least partially explains illegal graffiti. But there are much better ways to live on. Instead of just writing our name someplace where people can see it, why not do something important enough for people to remember it?
It won't be easy. Of the approximately 110 billion people who have ever been born, how many do we know anything about? Less than one percent? And a lot of those are people we wish hadn't lived at all. Anybody miss Saddam Hussein?
We want our name to be remembered, but the odds are it won't be. Yet, even if it's not, we can still positively impact the world and leave a constructive legacy. Even if our name is forgotten, our contribution won't be.
Before you settle on this year's resolution, try writing your own obituary. Morbid? Maybe. Yet there's no better way to instantly put your life into perspective. If it all ended tomorrow, would you be content? Have you done enough?
I stumbled upon a cool book called "The Last Word – A Celebration of Unusual Lives." It's a collection of New York Times obituaries of people like Richard Berry.
Know the name? I doubt it. Know what he did? I bet you do. In 1956, he wrote "the legendary three chord rock song, Louie Louie."
How about Alex Manoogian? After he migrated from Turkey to Michigan, he invented the single-handled faucet. He made a fortune. Then, in the spirit of Andrew Carnegie (who said we should spend the first half of our lives making money and the second half giving it away), he donated millions of dollars to hospitals and a bunch of other charities.
We know about the New York City Marathon, but we don't know about Fred Lebow, the man who created it. Born in the Transylvanian region of Romania, he was just a boy when he and his family fled from the Nazis.
He ended up in New York City where he became passionate about running and organizing races. (He also started that crazy quarter mile race up the 1,550 steps of the Empire State Building.) In 1970, he funded the first NYC Marathon with 300 of his own dollars. Today, the race is "limited" to 37,000 lottery chosen entrants.
In Lebow's obituary, former commissioner of NYC Parks and Recreation Henry Stern said, "If you're asking me if New York City is better off because Fred Lebow was around, the answer is yes."
How better off is your city because you're around?
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