THE MIRROR - THE DASH
The unfortunate part of life is that we all will end up in a box, six feet under, with a few hundred people, in the middle of a field. In other words, we are all guaranteed death. We all will die, some sooner than others. Because death is inevitable, I am reasonably sure that all of my readers have at one point or another seen a tombstone. You know the large rock planted at the head of a grave. The tombstone is an identification marker that tells others who lies at rest beneath it. Most tombstones have a name and maybe a picture representing hope or remembrance, but almost all tombstones have a dash between the year the person was born and the year the person died. For example, 1949 - 2025.
According to Oxford online dictionary, a dash is defined as a “horizontal stroke in writing or printing to mark a pause or break in sense or to represent omitted letters or words.” Therefore, one could suggest that the “dash” on our tombstones represents an entire life. One character symbolizes all of the joy, heartache, memories, money, moments, and people for an entire lifetime. One “dash” represents everything we have dreamed, wished, accomplished, and all our failures. When you think about your entire life in the form of DASH, it becomes more sobering. Please take this voluntary reading of my blog as your wake-up call to start making the most of YOUR DASH. Take the trip, say the word(s), leave the job, end the relationship, whatever is holding you back from making the most of your DASH, do it today!
What do you want your DASH to represent? Fame? Fortune? Love? Kindness? Think about it in the context of what you want people to highlight when reading your obituary. What milestones do you want some to highlight as the words leave their mouth with people mourning your loss? When you think of your entire life as one singular character, one punctuation mark, it could change how you feel about it. We are not promised an infinite amount of time on this blue marble. We are not guaranteed tomorrow. We only have today, this moment, this breath.
Most of us spend our entire lives living for other people. We chase dreams that are not necessarily personalized to our own desires. We are told from a young age how we “SHOULD” act or what we “SHOULD” do. As children, everyone takes advantage of the opportunity to influence our young minds and shape us in ways they think are needed. We find ourselves then in conflict when we do not want to be a doctor but instead want to be a dancer. Alternatively, we do not want to be lawyers; we want to be artists. Career choices are often not our own but a product of years of influence from a very young age. Someone very dear to me was in that exact conflict. He was pressured to be a doctor from a very young age, and there was no room in his childhood to explore other options. His entire existence was based on his becoming a successful doctor. He accomplished that and created a financially stable and fulfilling life, but if you asked him today what he wanted to be, he would say a professional dancer.
The point is it is YOUR “DASH”. You should own the full length of your life and live it to the fullest. At the end of a DASH is a year, and that year identifies the year you died. It does not matter if you died January 1st of that year or December 31st, you still sum that time up to four digits. Same with the first year on your tombstone that represents the year you started your life journey. So when you think about your entire life, permanently represented by eight digits and a dash, you start to think about things differently.
So ask yourself—when it is all said and done, will your dash tell your story, or someone else’s version of it? Will it reflect a life lived boldly and authentically, or one spent waiting for permission that never came? The dash does not measure how long we lived, but how deeply we lived. It captures the courage we showed, the love we gave, the risks we took, and the truth we honored within ourselves.
You do not need to wait for a milestone, a tragedy, or a wake-up call to start living intentionally. The opportunity to shape your dash exists right now, in the choices you make today. Choose alignment over approval. Choose fulfillment over expectation. Choose a life that, when reduced to a single mark between two dates, tells a story worth remembering.
Because in the end, all that remains is the dash—and the meaning you gave it
Disclaimer:
The content provided on this blog is for informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the guidance of your physician or other qualified health professionals with any questions you may have regarding your health or a medical condition. Never disregard or delay seeking professional medical advice based on information you have read here
