What Will Your Legacy Be?
Over the decades, the royalties have continued to flow from remake after remake of the beloved tale. The money has helped keep Great Ormond Street on the cutting edge of pediatric care.
Living a life on purpose may also include considering what you are prepared to leave behind. What do you want to be known for when you’re ‘gone?’ When you’re no longer in the business you’re in when you’re no longer in the ‘limelight’, what will people remember you for?
Consider this example, which comes from CBS’s Sunday Morning about J. M. Barrie, the author of ‘Peter Pan.’
‘When Jim Barrie wrote the Peter Pan, it became an instant sensation in print, on stage, and on the silent screen, and royalties came pouring into the author, who, although he loved children, had none of his own.
So when he died, James Barrie left it all to one of the earliest pediatric hospitals in London, Great Ormond Street.
Over the decades, the royalties have continued to flow from remake after remake of the beloved tale. The money has helped keep Great Ormond Street on the cutting edge of pediatric care.
‘James Barrie gave his copyright to the hospital and it was the most generous gift anyone could have done,’ hospital spokesperson, Laura Redmond told Sunday Morning contributor Elizabeth Palmer as she pointed out the plaque in Barrie’s memory in the hospital chapel.’
Pretty amazing story, right? But it gets even better as the legacy continues. You see next year, the copyright on ‘Peter Pan’ runs out and so the royalties will dwindle. What to do? Well, the hospital organized a contest to find an author who could write the sequel to ‘Peter Pan’ and they found her in the form of Geraldine McCaughrean.
‘Of course when I got the job — oh, oh I’ve got to find time to write this book,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to really, really write the sequel to ‘Peter Pan,’ but luckily it just seized me by the heart and um, just swallowed me in.’
And so, J. M. Barrie’s legacy continues as Geraldine McCaughrean’s begins. What will be your legacy? How will your life purpose live beyond you?
Questions worth pondering, perhaps even as you bring further clarity of purpose to your life.
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W. Bradford Swift has enjoyed a combo career as a writer and life coach for over thirty years, and now coaches aspiring authors to write that someday, one day book TODAY. http://wbradfordswift.com/writing-coach/
