Your identity should always lie in who you are, not in what you do. Your person should always produce your deeds, not your deeds the person. No matter your virtue and morality, do not esteem yourself above the disagreeable or mediocre. Growth brings maturity, not superiority. The intrinsic value of one is not reduced by the quality of another’s choices. Circumstances can skew perceptions, yet remain respectful of all living beings despite the sum of their appearance and behavior.

— Dili’s Memoirs, Camaraderie

How will I measure my life?
Priority values in concentric succession:

• who I am as a human being.

• who I am as a mate, father, lover, friend, employer, and neighbor.

• commitment to life with intentionality and purpose.

Hopeful Remains of the Day

• Build and run a successful company.

• Raise a child or children, adopt or sponsor one special needs child.

• Write a research paper.

• Create a minority exposition organization that combs through history for ignored, forgotten, and altered narratives about inventions, feats, and discoveries by gender and cultural minorities. Work with institutional officials and curators to include these accounts in textbooks and popular storytelling.

• Publish a book or two.

• Do a duet with Amy Lee or some favorite artists.

• Write a personal letter to every friend, dead or alive, telling them what their friendship meant and how it shaped my life’s journey. Mail if living or deliver to their grave if passed.

• Celebrate Golden Anniversary [50-years] with my spouse.

• Cremated on the same day of death. Every dust of ash blown away and none retained or preserved. No mementos, statues, buildings, or any honors named after me. To be gifted with ‘Passage’ – having lived, to pass, be forgotten, and unknown.

Faithful Last Words

• The Old Guardian: God, Force, Universe, or Whatever the heck we worship and adore up there started us all out with a quiver full of arrows. At twilight, I’d like to look back at life and say, ‘See, Old Friend, we took every shot: every single one of them – the good, the naïve, the bold, the stupid – every one, even when it got us in trouble. Every shot was taken, none was wasted.’ — Dili’s Memoirs, Closure

• In the end, I wish to define myself by who I am, not by what I do/did. It matters more to me how I remember living than whether or not some other person, present or future, remembers me. In earnest, couldn’t care less about being remembered. Lead your own life, then maybe we can chat about times over vodka in the afterlife. — Dili’s Memoirs, Legacy Notes

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