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What will matter? Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end. There will be no more sunrises, no days, no hours or minutes. All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else. Your wealth, fame and 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, plans, and to-do lists will all expire. The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away. It wont matter where you came from, or on what side of the tracks you lived. It wont matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant. Your gender, skin color, ethnicity will be irrelevant. So what will matter? How will the value of your days be measured? 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 your success, but your significance. What will matter is not what you learned, but what you taught. What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage and sacrifice that enriched, empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example. What will matter is not your competence, but your character. | 
