c. 1999 Religion News Service
(Dale Hanson Bourke is publisher of RNS.)
UNDATED _ Now that the impeachment trial is over, all the potentially-unemployed pundits have found a new topic: What is the president’s legacy?
While they argue over whether Bill Clinton will be measured by his foreign policy or moral failings, I suggest the rest of us turn off the television and spend some time thinking about our own lives. After all, legacies aren’t just for presidents.
In our own way, each of us will be remembered by those close to us and those who only knew us in passing. In the way we live our own life, each of us will leave a mark. Perhaps the one good thing to come of this national debacle will be a time of personal contemplation.
I suppose I first realized the impact of an ordinary human life when my own father died. He wasn’t ordinary to his family. To us he was an extraordinarily loving, kind and generous man whose life ended far too early.
But I will never forget the day of his funeral when person after person came to greet me, introduce themselves, and tell me briefly what my father had meant to them.
Some were close friends. But many I had never heard my father mention. One man told me how my father had hired him despite his criminal record and in that one act of trust had turned his life around forever. Another told me about my father loaning him money one day when he had run out of places to go.
A woman told me how my father had taken time to listen and to let her cry when her husband had left her.”He really cared,”she said with tears in her eyes.
My father made no foreign policy and never even had a political bumper sticker on his car. He was human and readily admitted it, giving in at times to outbursts of temper and fits of stubbornness. We rolled our eyes at his corny sense of humor and braced ourselves when he announced,”I’ve got a great idea ….” But my father cared deeply about his family, friends and even strangers. He gave freely of what he had and offered a hand to anyone in need, without thought of his own convenience or safety.
He never wrote a book and only gave a few speeches. Yet I quote him regularly and try to live a life based on many of the principles he etched in my character. My sister and I are teaching our children as we were taught by our father. His legacy lives on in five grandchildren who still benefit from the life of a man they hardly knew.
My father was an ordinary man. Yet his daily acts of kindness and grace built a legacy that endures.
How will any of us be remembered? By the impact we have on the lives closest to us. By the kindness we show to those we encounter. By the times we reach beyond our safe world into the world of those we never had to touch.
Our legacy depends on how we see our mission in life. How we are remembered is being built on each day’s words and deeds. What we each do today builds the foundation for tomorrow’s memories.
Perhaps the presidency makes a person think more about how history will view him. But we may all benefit from the current obsession with President Clinton’s legacy if we take some time to look at our own.
END BOURKE
