Dash

Dash
This morning I was reading about Mozart.  Everyone is different but for me I really love his music.  Some of Chopin I find really moving and enjoyable (I love his piano concertos).  I get off on Brahms and enjoy a lot of Beethoven.  Handel and Hayden I like.  I must confess it is the composers of the Romantic era I gravitate to listening to.  Wagner is ok but some of his stuff is unbelievably good to me.
My brother influenced me big time when it came to classical music.  After he had left home, I was in the Music club and ordered a lot of classical music.  But one composer stood out to me more than all the others and that was Mozart.  It is incredibly subjective, but I found his music as close to perfection as one can come in music.
Yet he died incognito.  No one knows where his grave is.  If he had a gravestone it would read 1756 – 1791.  Many have a plot and a plaque.  I was responsible for the plaque on my mum’s grave.  She was a women of faith and I used a verse from the Bible “Rejoice greatly oh daughter of Zion, behold your King has come.”
The reason I was thinking about this was what I read in a book I love by Charles Swindoll called “Growing Strong in the Seasons of Life.”  I keep it in the smallest room in the house and everything is bite size and can be read in one sitting as it were.  What I love is it is full of good stuff in my opinion.
What I read this morning really got me thinking.  He said it was the dash that contained the story.  A gravestone may read 1963 – 2017 but it is the dash between the numbers that contain the story.
I do not know when my life will be over.  Right now it is 1958 – with the end date undetermined.  Yet whenever it is, it is the dash that will contain the story.  I am really hoping that when that date is it is not said “well I’m glad that’s over.”  I want the dash to represent a good story.
I may not be a household name known the world over but the household’s I am a household name in, I want it to be for a good reason.  I reckon the choice is mine.  The best-case scenario to me is to finish well.
How I start the race is not as important to me as how I finish it.  I reckon I started pretty well, but was way back in the field until I got my second wind.  I’m trying to finish strongly.   This race is a bit different though cause I won’t know I have crossed the finish line until I do.  That keeps me on my toes.
There are others in the race, and they may beat me, but I am just aiming for a personal best.  The dash may contain the story, but I want the dash to the finish line to be a personal best.  That to me is a win.