Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end. There will be no more sunrises or sunsets, no minutes, hours or days. All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else.

Your wealth, fame or temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance. It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed. Your grudges, resentments, frustrations and jealousies will finally disappear. So, too your hopes, ambitions, plan and to-do lists will expire. It won’t matter whether you were beautiful, or handsome, or brilliant, even you gender, skin color will be irrelevant.

What will matter is not what you bought, but what you built, not what you got, but what you gave. What will matter is not what you learnt but what you taught. What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage, or sacrifice that enriched, empowered, or encouraged others to emulate your example. What will matter is not your competence, but your character. What will matter are not your memories, but the memories that live in those who loved you. What will matter is how long you will be remembered.

Living a life that matters does not happen by accident. It’s not a matter of circumstances, but of choice.