What of you should live beyond you?
The two stages of life: building ego and living wisdom.
Stage 1: Construct an “I” for yourself and the world through quests and failures, blacks and whites. Your self-image--success, failure, acclaim, embarrassment--defines you.
Stage 2: Your “I” limits you so you release it, giving your deepest self room to breathe. Resiliency and relationship develop wisdom, patience, kindness, and compassion.
Most people never get to Stage 2. They stop at its edge, clutch their carefully constructed self-image, and retreat.
We think of Stage 1 as The Whole Enchilada. We value “success” instead of love, wisdom, trust, and peace. Hence war, bad politics, midlife crises, and pitying Moses.
At age 25 Moses finds his role. For 95 years he leads the Israelites through famine & abundance, faith & idolatry, toward a promised land. Moses becomes “MOSES! The Deliverer Of His People!”
Finally, at age 120, he arrives. God tells Moses, “there it is. Everything you’ve worked for. But you won’t get to enjoy it. It’s for everyone else.” Moses sees all he’s worked for, dies, and is buried on its edge.
All those years, all that suffering and frustration, and Moses doesn’t get any of the win.
Tragic, right? Uh, no.
After he took credit for God’s work (and God told him off) he realized how much his “I” was getting in the way. He trained a successor and passed his leadership on, and kept walking toward his people’s good.
There at the edge, he saw his people’s future and God’s faithfulness. What of him would live beyond him was enough.
You can keep defining yourself in terms of your quests and failures. You can resent all the things you couldn’t have, all the Promised Lands you missed out on, and hate yourself (and others) for the mistakes you’ve made along the way.
Or you can focus on what of you is truly valuable to others, over the long haul, and keep walking toward that.
What of your "I" needs to go?
“Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.”Then Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, at the Lord’s command.” ”