“View your life from your funeral: Looking back at your life experiences, what have you accomplished? What would you have wanted to accomplish but didn’t? What were the happy moments? What were the sad? What would you do again, and what wouldn’t you do?” –Victor Frankl
When I was young I never knew that my passion and purpose in life would be around animals. I grew up thinking I would be a lawyer because I liked to argue my point of view and convince my mother that her logic was wrong about things I was in trouble for doing.
Like all of you, I hope I live a long and healthy life for many more years to come. But if something unfortunate should happen to me to snuff out my life before I believe it should be snuffed out, then I hope people at my funeral will know that I lived a happy life and I am proud of what I have tried to do in order to help animals.
When I consider what I have accomplished in the last 5 years running Doobert, it is quite humbling indeed considering where I began. I did not even know how to create a website let alone a software platform supporting tens of thousands of volunteers and organizations with a common purpose of saving animals. I had no idea how to do internet marketing or even how to create a page on Facebook and acronyms like SEO, CPC, CAC, WP among others were nowhere in my vocabulary.
But if I was delivering the eulogy at my funeral I would highlight the joy and fulfillment I experienced while supporting passionate animal rescuers. I would reflect on how my thirst for knowledge was always being quenched as I focused on learning more about how to run a small business so that Doobert could support the animal rescue community. I would revel in knowing my faith in humanity was restored through my interactions with volunteers, conversations with organizations and relationships with passionate rescuers and leaders along the way.
I would expose the many mistakes I made along the way but bask in the knowledge that these mistakes did not define me. They did not own me or hold me back or keep me from trying again and again. In fact, every mistake, every critique and every complaint motivated me to push that much harder for excellence the next time around.
When you look back on your life’s journey, I hope you see the positive impact you have made on the world, and that you celebrate the life you lived.
