Weaving in and out of the headstones in St Mary’s cemetery located at Harrow-On-The-Hill was something that I did when I wanted to experience peace and quiet found in contemplation, rather than going inward into meditation. There is beautiful scenic tranquility found within that ancient Norman cemetery on the hill.  The walk from our home in West Harrow to the cemetery was several miles. And of course, to get to St Mary’s one had to climb a rather steep incline. While my history is a little sketchy, Wikipedia suggests that the church was built between 1087 – 1094 during the Middle Ages. It was in the late 1800’s that the original cemetery was closed for burials, making way for the newer grounds, in which people are still being laid to rest today.

I’m sharing all of this with you to illustrate my point, which I’ll get to in just a moment. Given the age of the cemetery, there’s not too much of a stretch in one’s imagination, when I say that some of the headstones are leaning like the tower of Pisa. Others are flattened like they’ve been steamrolled and others stand erect like the obelisks guarding the entrance of an Egyptian temple.

Many of the older stones that date back through to the Middle Ages are weather-beaten. The names and dates of the people buried there are long gone, eroded by the wind, rain, sun, snow and vegetation. Other than where the headstones are physically located, there is one thing both new and ancient stones have in common. A dash! That’s right, you read correctly. I did say a “dash.  A hyphen.” On many of the older stones, I could see the almost imperceptible dash that had been hammered between the date of birth and the date of death. Time had not yet erased that and I wondered why.

While I could go on and on about my wonderful experiences I had in the ancient Norman cemetery on the Hill, I won’t. I’ll cut to the chase. It took several years for me to figure out what the symbology of the dash between the date of birth and the date of death meant.

The insightful symbology told me that neither your date of birth nor death matters, in the grand scheme of things. It’s the dash or hyphen in between those two events that is of the utmost importance. That dash, that hyphen, represents every choice, every heartfelt thought, every word spoken audibly or not, every deed and every action you have ever taken. That dash represents the sum total of your existence here in this dimension. That dash, which delineates life and death, tells the personal story of the choices you’ve made. Life is, after all, built one choice at a time.

There is an irony here, no one, and I mean no one, but you will ever know or understand the sum total of your “dash!” So, in closing I’ll leave you with my motto, “from your cradle to your grave create the life that you want to live through the power of your conscious awareness of your choice.” Make your dash count for you and what you want to experience and leave as your legacy in this life!