25d • Journal Entries
Mirror of Your Time - Legacy Is Your Currency and a Ghost From 1956 Taught Me I Was Wasting Mine
Journal Entry
And now I’m running out of time, trying to outlive life, just when I’ve got it figured out how to make it shine, the hands of time have cut up, and I’m still running, staying in the fight.
Those are lyrics from one of our new songs called Wasting No More Time, set to release in just a few weeks. I wrote those words from a place most people don’t like to visit. That quiet room in the back of your mind where you sit down with yourself and ask the only question that actually matters. Have I done what I came here to do.
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Every year around this time I’m reminded of my father’s birthday. This year would have put him at 89. He passed away ten years ago, but my thoughts are always circular to this part of the year. His birthday passes by like another orbiting celestial being around my world, predictable and gravitational, pulling me back into the same reflection whether I want to go there or not. His influence on my life was significant, although the memories themselves only capture a few wisps of remembrance. Fleeting images. A voice I can almost hear. Moments that feel more like impressions than photographs. And yet those wisps carry more weight than anything concrete ever could.
Here is what happens when you go looking for a man who lived a full life before the internet existed. If you Google my father, only one thing comes up. His minor league baseball stats from 1956. He was a pitcher in the New York Giants farm system, played for both the Muskogee and St. Cloud franchises. Forty three strikeouts on the season. A three and three record. That is it. That is the entire digital footprint of a man who raised a family, loved people, failed at things, succeeded at others, and eventually left this earth the same way we all will. One obituary notice and a line in a box score from a league most people have never heard of.
There are no pictures. No video. No diary. No historical reference. Not even a family tree written on the back of an envelope somewhere. The man literally does not exist in any searchable, findable, retrievable way. He exists only in the minds of the people who can still recall the faintest details, both good and bad, that made up the full texture of someone’s life. And those minds are aging. Those memories are fading. And one day they will be gone too.
Now I know this is not uncommon. The technology simply was not there. Most of our grandparents and their parents before them vanished from the public record the same way. But knowing that does not make it sit any easier. It still bugs me. It nags at something deeper than nostalgia. Because what it really does is hold a mirror up to my own face and ask me a question I cannot dodge.
What will be left of you.
I realize it might sound a little morbid to be thinking about this. And I am not trying to point out the obvious reality that when you reach a certain age you start doing this math. But there is a moment, and I think most people know exactly when it happened to them, where you suddenly understand that your time horizon is sunsetting to some degree. The days are not infinite. The calendar is not a suggestion. And once that understanding lands in your chest, everything shifts. You start looking at the world differently. At least I do.
So I keep coming back to this mirror. This mirror of time. I keep staring into it trying to figure out if I have done enough, if I have made things right, if the mission I feel burning inside of me is something I have honored or something I have been putting off while I was busy doing everything else. And every time I look, I see the same thing. The mission is still in front of me. It is not behind me. It is not finished. It is still out there waiting for me to catch up to it.
And that is not discouraging. That is fuel.
Because I am still running. I am still willing to put up the fight. I still want that sense of true accomplishment where I can look back on the things I built, the things I said, the things I poured into other people, and say with real conviction that I was proud of what I brought into this world. Not for vanity. Not for applause. But for the people who come after me. Future family. Future friends. Anyone who might stumble across my words or my work and pull something useful from the wreckage of a life fully lived.
When I started looking inward at this mirror of time, really looking at myself with no filter and no excuse, I realized the affliction is not age. The affliction is the line of time itself. This finite thread that runs from the moment you arrive to the moment you leave, and everything in between is just a statement. A statement of life, of dreams, of worthwhile accomplishments, of ideal outcomes you were brave enough to chase. And I am still searching for that ideal situation of making it right. Making it right with myself. Making it right with the work. Building something that places me on a stage in my own mind where I can say I defined and educated and contributed the things I believe will help move this world forward. In business. In hope. In love. In every single lesson I have picked up along the way.
My father left behind forty three strikeouts and a three and three record. That is what the world can see. But what the world cannot see is the man who shaped a son who is now writing these words at a kitchen table trying to figure out how to leave behind something more findable, more lasting, more useful than a single line in a forgotten database.
Your legacy is your currency. It is the only thing you spend that someone else gets to keep. And the question is not whether you are going to leave something behind. You will. The question is whether you are going to be intentional about it or whether you are going to let the world decide for you the way it decided for almost everyone who came before us.
So what does your mirror look like. What do you see when you stand in front of it with nowhere to hide. Because the hands of time have already cut up, and you are still running, and the only thing worth figuring out is whether you are running toward something that matters.
Lesson Learned
Legacy is not something you build at the end. It is something you are building right now whether you realize it or not. Every conversation, every piece of work, every moment you choose to show up and pour yourself into something meaningful is a deposit into an account that outlives you. The people who came before us did not have the tools to leave a trail. We do. The question is no longer whether you can be remembered. The question is whether what you leave behind will be worth finding.
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Mirror of Your Time - Legacy Is Your Currency and a Ghost From 1956 Taught Me I Was Wasting Mine
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