The Dash by Linda Ellis
I read of a man who stood to speak
At the funeral of a friend
He referred to the dates on the tombstone
From the beginning...to the end
He noted that first came the date of birth
And spoke the following date with tears,
But he said what mattered most of all
Was the dash between those years
For that dash represents all the time
That they spent alive on earth.
And now only those who loved them
Know what that little line is worth
For it matters not, how much we own,
The cars...the house...the cash.
What matters is how we live and love
And how we spend our dash.
So, think about this long and hard.
Are there things you'd like to change?
For you never know how much time is left
That can still be rearranged.
If we could just slow down enough
To consider what's true and real
And always try to understand
The way other people feel.
And be less quick to anger
And show appreciation more
And love the people in our lives
Like we've never loved before.
If we treat each other with respect
And more often wear a smile,
Remembering this special dash
Might only last a little while
So, when your eulogy is being read
With your life's actions to rehash...
Would you be proud of the things they say
About how you spent YOUR dash?
Every morning I walk our dog through the cemetery that we live by and it’s quiet and it’s peaceful and safe and coach last week who reminded me of a poem called the dash and I don’t want to read the whole poem, but the gist of it is what do you do with the time that’s on your head stone that that appears in between the day you were born in the day that you died. so there’s that –… 1924-2000 or 1928 - 2016 and it might get a little morbid but what do you do with that little imprint you get to leave on the planet ?
I was trying to think of how we could apply that to sport and every sports team has a dash. It’s not the lifespan of the team, the Dash is the record, so if you go 20-3 or 4-16 or 8-6-1, the dashes are who you’ve become over the course of the season. They tell a much bigger story than the numbers in front of or behind it. It’s what we do in between the wins and looses and what we do over the course of a season that really defines how it went.
