We All Get to Die

Dolly Parton died this week.

And somehow, even though I never met her, the news made me stop.

Perhaps that is what happens when someone has been woven into the fabric of the world for so long. Their death feels bigger than the loss of one person. Something shifts.

Some deaths rock a family.

Some rock a community.

Some rock a nation.

And every once in a while, someone dies, and it feels as though the whole world rocks just a little.

But lately I've been wondering if perhaps every human death rocks the world.

Maybe some earthquakes are simply too small for us to feel.

Because every person who has ever lived has changed something.

We have loved people. Hurt people. Helped people. Disappointed people. Encouraged people. Raised children. Befriended strangers. Changed someone's mind. Broken someone's heart. Made someone laugh on a day when they desperately needed to laugh.

We have said things people carried with them.

We have done things people remembered.

And sometimes we have done things that changed another person's life without ever knowing we did it.

Our lives ripple outward.

And those ripples create other ripples.

Which means that whether we intend to or not, every one of us changes the course of humanity in some tiny way simply because we were here.

Dolly's ripple happened to be enormous.

She gave the world music, certainly. But she also gave millions of children books. She created her Imagination Library because her father could not read or write, beginning in her home county in Tennessee and eventually helping put books into the hands of children around the world.

But I suspect what many people will remember most isn't a statistic.

They'll remember her.

The enormous hair.

The rhinestones.

The laugh.

The quick wit.

The refusal to apologize for being exactly who she was.

And beneath all that sparkle was something much more enduring: generosity.

She understood something I find myself thinking about more and more lately.

We don't get to decide whether we leave a legacy.

We only get to decide what kind.

Life can change astonishingly quickly.

One minute everything is humming along rather beautifully, and then—bam.

Something happens.

A relationship changes.

A truth emerges.

A person disappoints you.

A door closes.

Another one unexpectedly opens.

A chapter you thought had several more pages abruptly ends, and suddenly you're standing at the beginning of a chapter you never expected to be writing.

I find myself there now.

I am preparing for a new professional chapter and, in many ways, a new life. And perhaps because I know change is coming, I feel almost feverish about leaving things better than I found them.

I want the work I have done to matter.

I want the people I've worked with to be better because I was there.

I want the things I've learned to travel with me into whatever comes next.

And strangely, at exactly the same time, I am learning some very different lessons about people.

Some have been painful.

There is a particular kind of heartbreak that comes not from losing someone, but from losing your understanding of who you thought someone was.

I don't think we talk about that kind of grief very often.

You can deeply respect someone for years and then learn something that doesn't fit.

Then you learn something else.

And something else.

And eventually you find yourself trying to reconcile the person you believed you knew with the choices that person actually made.

It can make your stomach hurt.

I know because mine has.

I keep finding myself asking questions for which there may never be satisfying answers.

Why would someone risk hurting a person they claim to love?

Why would someone jeopardize a relationship built on trust?

Why hide something unless some part of you already knows it shouldn't be happening?

Why tell half of a truth when the entire purpose of honesty is to finally be completely honest?

Because selective honesty isn't really vulnerability.

Sometimes it is simply another way of controlling the story.

And perhaps one of the hardest lessons of adulthood is accepting that we may never understand why another person made the choices they made.

Maybe we're not supposed to.

Maybe the more useful question is:

What will I choose because of what I have learned?

I cannot make another person honest.

But I can be honest.

I cannot make another person protect someone's trust.

But I can protect the trust people place in me.

I cannot make someone choose kindness.

But I can choose kindness.

I cannot force someone else to take responsibility for the hurt they caused.

But I can take responsibility for mine.

And I cannot control the legacy someone else is creating.

But I am responsible for mine.

That realization feels strangely freeing.

Because other people's choices don't get to decide who I become.

In fact, sometimes the people who disappoint us most profoundly teach us incredibly important lessons.

Someone else's dishonesty can make us more committed to truth.

Someone else's betrayal can teach us how sacred trust really is.

Someone else's selfishness can make us more generous.

Someone else's failure to protect something precious can remind us to fiercely protect what is precious in our own lives.

Perhaps even disappointment can become a teacher if we allow it.

And all of this brings me back to death.

We all get to die.

I don't actually think that's a dark sentence.

I think there might even be something beautiful about it.

Death is the one experience promised to every human being who gets the privilege of being alive.

We don't know what it will be like.

We don't get to come back and tell everyone else what happens next.

Many people believe we go somewhere beautiful—that death is not an ending at all, but a homecoming into eternal peace.

Maybe they're right.

I hope they are.

I don't know.

But I do know this:

Death is waiting for every one of us.

Not ominously.

Just inevitably.

And strangely, I find that comforting.

Because if I know the story ends, then I want to pay very close attention to how I write the middle.

I want to laugh loudly.

I want to walk outside and turn my face toward the sun.

I want to travel.

I want to learn things.

I want to make people feel safe.

I want to tell the truth even when the truth costs me something.

I want to keep promises.

I want to protect people's trust when they're standing beside me and when they're nowhere around.

I want to love people in ways that don't require deception.

I want to apologize completely when I am wrong—not just enough to make myself look better.

I want to forgive whenever I reasonably can.

I want to give grace without surrendering discernment.

I want to leave places better than I found them.

And when I inevitably hurt someone, because I am human and I will, I hope I possess enough humility to look at what I did without rewriting the story to make myself more comfortable.

Most of all, I want the people who know me best to know the same person everyone else knows.

Because perhaps integrity is simply being the same person when nobody is watching.

Dolly Parton had eighty years.

And look at the ripples.

Her Imagination Library began in one Tennessee county in 1995. Before her death, it had grown across five countries, sending millions of books to children every month.

But most of us won't leave behind something with our name on it.

That's okay.

Maybe our greatest legacy isn't supposed to have our name on it.

Maybe it lives inside other people.

In a child who felt loved.

A friend who felt understood.

A patient who felt cared for.

A coworker who became better at something because we took the time to teach them.

A stranger whose difficult day became slightly easier because we were kind.

A person whose confidence we protected even when betraying it would have benefited us.

Those things ripple too.

And we will probably never know how far.

Someday my life will end.

So will yours.

So will the lives of everyone we love.

We all get to die.

The great uncertainty is when.

And perhaps that is one of life's greatest gifts because it leaves us with only today.

Today I can tell the truth.

Today I can love somebody well.

Today I can keep my word.

Today I can make something better.

Today I can repair something I damaged.

Today I can make someone laugh.

Today I can choose courage over convenience.

Today I can choose kindness when nobody would blame me for choosing otherwise.

Today I can create one tiny ripple of goodness and send it out into a world whose shoreline I will never completely see.

We spend so much time wondering what people will say about us when we're gone.

Perhaps the better question is:

What are people experiencing because we're here?

Because legacy isn't something we leave when we die.

We're leaving it right now.

Every conversation.

Every promise.

Every truth.

Every kindness.

Every choice.

And if we are fortunate enough to wake up tomorrow, we get another day to decide what kind of ripple we want to leave behind.

A Honey Note 🍯

Someday someone you love or admire may disappoint you.

You may discover that someone wasn't quite who you believed they were, and you may desperately want to understand why they made the choices they did.

Sometimes you will get an answer.

Sometimes you won't.

Don't spend too much of your beautiful life trying to solve someone else's heart.

Pay attention instead to what the experience teaches you about your own.

Let dishonesty make you value truth more.

Let betrayal teach you the value of loyalty.

Let disappointment sharpen your discernment without hardening your heart.

And never confuse kindness with allowing people to behave however they wish.

You can give someone grace and still step away.

You can forgive someone and still see them differently.

You can love someone and decide they no longer belong in the same place in your life.

Most importantly, remember that your character is built in thousands of tiny moments when nobody is applauding.

Choose the life that allows you to put your head on your pillow at night and recognize the person you were that day.

And then tomorrow, if you're lucky enough to get one, wake up and do it again.

With love,

Honey 🍯

We all get to die. What a lovely reason to make sure we really live.