A ninety-two year old, petite, well-poised and proud man, who is fully dressed each morning by eight o’clock, with his hair fashionably combed and shaved perfectly, even though he is legally blind, moved to a nursing home today. His wife of seventy years recently passed away, making the move necessary.
After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home he smiled sweetly when told his room was ready. As he manoeuvered his walker to the elevator, I provided a visual description of his tiny room, including the eyelet sheets that had been hung on his window. ‘I love it’, he stated with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old having just been presented with a new puppy. ‘Mr. Jones, you haven’t seen the room yet; just wait.’ ‘That doesn’t have anything to do with it,’ he replied.
‘Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn’t depend on how the furniture is arranged … it’s how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it. It’s a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice; I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty with the parts of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do.’
Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Roy Fines via @RootsWingsBiz
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Stop leaving your legacy to chance
This year marks three years since I expressed gratitude to my Dad for the wisdom, optimism, good humour and integrity that had inspired me as a youngster and sustained me as an adult. It also marks the third anniversary of cradling my last remaining parent close before giving him my permission to let go.
When tributes to the late Roy Fines began to pour in, it came as no surprise how many recalled his sunny disposition, his admirable ability to smile in the face of adversity or to search for the positive in every person, place or situation. With hindsight, it also seemed completely predictable that he would have put the moving piece above along with a multitude of other inspirational works, music and quotes and collated them for my safekeeping and future contemplation in a folder marked ‘My Philosophy’.
Life threw many and varied challenges in his path but in stark contrast to well-publicized deathbed regrets, on his final day, Dad mustered enough strength to cite his reasons to be grateful. There were no regrets.
Dad hadn’t left his legacy to chance. What a gift for me to be able to discover and learn from the philosophy behind his actions, the mindset behind his motivation. What a triumph for him to be remembered by so many for precisely the qualities he had privately been striving to cultivate.
Do the things you want to be remembered for
His gift to me is priceless. It’s touched me in simple yet immensely powerful ways. Most profoundly, when working my way through the contents of his folder, I realised I wasn’t yet doing work that was aligned with my values or doing the very things I wanted my children to remember about me when I could no longer be with them.
Dad had helped me to discover a vantage point that allowed me to see my daily actions in a whole new light. He’d given me the gift of clarity and perspective, an ‘Inner Compass’ and a tangible way to sense check whether the life I was actually living out was creating the legacy I wanted to leave.
Lisa Barber founded Rootsandwings.biz after the loss of her father. She believes we have a responsibility to let people know where there’s help and hope available for them. As a marketing teacher and business mentor, she now helps small business owners in helping professions to connect their care with the people who need it. You can follow her on Twitter and FB.
Image courtesy of Chris Lawton.
