How You Start or How You Finish?

Happy New Year’s Eve! Another year has come and gone, our well-intentioned plans have either gone amazingly well or completely and horribly wrong and yet nonetheless, most of us are still here to celebrate on the eve of 2013.  My thought this morning is simple; “what is more important, how you start or how you finish?” 

Personally, I think my start was a bit rough, but one thing I did not, (and still don’t) allow was the world or its infinite problems to dictate my finish. It could have been far too easy for me to throw up my hands, become just another anonymous victim, and let life’s tragedy’s sweep me away as it has so many countless other people. I chose instead to be a rebel, and fight all that wished or desired to drag me down. In the famous words of Elton John, “I’m Still Standing.”

The great news is that for all those that are reading these words this morning, we still have a have a chance to finish well.  We are neither at our beginning or at our ending and the rest of our story has not yet been written, so how do you want to be remembered?

I think of those famous few we lost this year; Dick Clark, who will forever be remembered as the world’s oldest teenager and the honey smooth voice and MC of “American Bandstand”.  Maybe our desire is much more grand, like leaving our fingerprint on the world like Neil Armstrong.  Maybe our life’s work will be accomplished in something everyone will need and use everyday but never be known for such an incredible idea, like Eugene Polley, the inventor of the first ever wireless remote control. Maybe you will forever be remembered for standing up for what you believe in like Charles “Chuck” Colson.  

I think of the many famous actors who passed in 2012, that lived out their adventures inside my little 19” color television from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s like Andy Griffith, Richard Dawson (“Survey Says”) Sherman “George Jefferson” Hemsley, Larry Hagman (btw- who really shot J.R?) and Jack Klugman from the classic sitcom “The Odd Couple”; they don’t make shows like they used to.

We still have a chance. 

Maybe you are a music fan and can still remember the haunting notes of “At Last” by Etta James, Donna Summer singing disco or remember watching for the first time ever, a music show on TV completely dedicated to Soul music; “Soul Train” with Don Cornelius; yeah he’s gone too.  Some people will only be remembered for having such great talent, and yet taken way too soon like Whitney Houston, who  was remarked by some as the greatest voice ever to be on stage. Sadly, some of our last memories of such an epic singer will be the ones of her demise into the dark world of drug and alcohol addiction.  Watching her final years as she struggled to beat those addictions was dismal and disappointing. 

There are other people too that 

quietly left their indelible mark on the world in their own way. There was famous Professional Boxing trainer Angelo Dundee, Bert Sugar who famously wrote about those men he trained like Mohammed Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard, and world champion boxers Hector “Macho” Camacho and Johnny Tapia; Tapia who mercifully finally succumbed to a life plagued by violence and drug abuse.  There is Davy Jones of the Monkees, and who doesn’t remember what a Thomas Kinkade painting looks like? For the hot rod crowd, there will never be another Carroll Shelby, or a Ferdinand Alexander Porsche who designed the classic 911. “Stormin’ Norman” is gone, as is, Ray Bradbury, master of suspense.

 

All in all, the silver lining that we can take away as we mourn some of the favorite and famous people amongst our generation is that, as crazy as it sounds, you are not one of these people. You can still wake up and make a difference just like they did. The challenge will be in what kind of difference you make in the lives of others.  

We still have a chance.

So, Happy New Year, and as you pop the cork on the bubbly tonight, as you toast, as you hug, as you kiss those loved ones and friends in grateful celebration, just think about this; will it cross your mind on how you want to finish? I hope so. Let’s finish strong together! See ya next year!

-Lou