What Endures (a spoken word)

I don’t want my days to be measured in numbers on a ledger, in margins that fatten corporations that will forget my name the moment I am gone. I want my life to mean more than that. I want my work to move like a ripple through generations yet unborn, to plant seeds in a soil I may never touch, to leave behind not dust, but roots. I don’t want to build monuments of profit that crumble with the next quarter’s fall. I want to build bridges of effort, arches of intention, foundations that endure storms long after my hands are still. Because what is time worth, if not poured into something that lasts? What is effort worth, if not shaping the world into more than it was before you arrived? I want to look back and see not wasted years feeding a machine that only devours, but a trail of light, small fires lit in the darkness, torches carried forward by those I may never meet. Meaning is not in the paycheck, or the title, or the polished glass towers of ambition. Meaning is in the legacy of what you dared to give yourself to— fully, ferociously, without apology. I want to give my strength, my time, my fleeting breath, to something that will stand when I cannot, to something that whispers long after I fall silent.