Blog 3110 – 05.05.2024

To Leave Something Behind

Legacy is important even to the narcissists, the praise and power hungry would be dictators and tyrants. When you speak your mind, question traditions, or the myths put forth as history written by the winners that tend to leave out the high crimes, treason, and horrendous acts committed in the name of profits, progress, and maintaining power, you will be called a trouble maker. As our brother Elvis sang, “Trouble is my middle name.”

I would like to leave behind some encouraging words. I first heard Sean Rowe sing today’s song like many other people at the end of the Ben Affleck movie The Accountant. The movie came out in October of 2016. I was working on the road in Wisconsin far from my wife and son who were home in Houston, Texas. One of the things I was working hard not to leave behind was a lot of unpaid debts. Like a lot of people my wife and I had amassed a stifling amount of credit card debt. So much that I wondered if we would ever be able to retire. I actually signed up for full Social Security Benefits in 2016 as I turned sixty-six on my birthday that year. My intention was to save those checks toward a retirement nest egg and use my wages to pay down our credit card debt. A year and a half off work due to COVID used up those savings and forced my wife and I to refinance our home to pay off all our credit card debt so we could live on our Social Security checks alone.

Fortunately I was able to take one last away from home work assignment to Nebraska in May of 2020 through December and was able to replace the savings that COVID had wiped out. I share all that personal financial information not to brag nor to entertain investment ideas or charity donation requests, but to leave something behind. If our loving and infinite source can do that for me and my wife, it can be true for you too.

What I truly hope to leave behind is not just a bank account balance, a cash stash, or a few silver and gold coins, but some encouraging words. Love is the greatest legacy we can leave behind. These blogs are my love letters to anyone willing to read them.

I hope my granddaughter will read them someday and be encouraged to know how much her Papa loved her from the start. I do not believe our legacy is limited to our immediate family only, but to our entire family. I do not pretend to understand Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, still I do understand a much simpler one – we are all related, we are family.

Your friend, fellow traveler, and family,

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vMeLMcbpUSD9S5BlFwxWe4vDgx3wDiDp/view?usp=drivesdk

To Leave Something Behind