Williams encourages students to live by new motto

“Living the Dash”—introduced by Mr. Williams, is an ideal we don’t often think of, but an important one nonetheless.

To live the dash in your life means to think about the beginning (birth) and the end (death) and focus on what goes on in between those two dates. What makes you who you are? Who will you be remembered as? What have you gone through and accomplished in your life?

I know a lot of people who have said that they often think about who will show up to their funeral when they die and what they will say. However, we don’t pay enough attention to why those people will be there, why they say what they do. Everything that we do has an impact on not only us, but those around us. If we want to be remembered for great things, then we have to do great things.

Many of us often think about the future and how we want to live out our lives. With the belief that we only have one life to live, we want to make it the best that we possibly can. It is sad to know that people look back at their lives near the end and regret the choices that they made and who they were, which is why it is important to pay attention to not only what is happening now, but what is happening in the future as well, so that we can make decisions that we will one day be proud of.

This leads to the subject of motivation. We are often motivated by our own selfish desires. We do what we need to get by in the moment, but we should be thinking about more than that. We should be focused on how the decisions we make today will affect us tomorrow, and whether or not that will satisfy us. That is what the dash means, making the most of the time we have here on earth. We should use our fear of the future to motivate us to make it the best that we can be, so that one day we can look back and be content with the contents of our dash.