by Raynie Andrewsen

Created on: May 26, 2009

What makes a life significant? Is it accumulating as much material goods and money as you can while you are alive? Maybe. Is it life long learning and becoming a professor to those who seek it? Perhaps. Is it serving a higher purpose or the greater good? Possibly. If you asked transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson he would say, "No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature...the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it." It makes one wonder. Is leading a significant life all a matter of listening to your own intuition? I think Emerson had it right. A significant life is truly individual.

A Welsh minister once said, "Life is just a chance to grow a soul." I agree with his statement. I believe that the soul lives on after this life and the next. I believe that my insatiable curiosity is simply my soul's yearning for knowledge and experience and growth. On my path of self discovery I have had to experience life, find a passion and a purpose, and ask myself... "What matters the most to me?" It is in this quest that I have learned what makes a life significant.

I believe that what makes a life significant to me is growing my soul, being a loving, nurturing mother, setting and example of an honorable life for the generations that I may touch in my own tiny circle. However, that is just my version. In a small famished village in Africa a significant life may be one who learns how to create sustainable crops and teaches others in the village how to continue the legacy so they will not be hungry. In an inner-city a significant life may be a man who establishes a youth program to keep kids off the streets and out of gangs. He may help some of them succeed in school and possibly be the first in their family to graduate from college.

These are examples of significant lives, maybe not to everyone, but to someone it is. A significant life is personal, and human. It is touching lives in the sphere of our influence and leaving behind something. Something that makes another think, react, change paths, or even just smile. To discover your own significant life you have to ask the question. "What really matters to you?"

I have been a nursery worker, wildlife rehabber, horse race handicapper, pit boss and merchandiser, but none of those positions made me feel significant. I have seen a few nice places and some took my breath away. Significance was hard to find there too. I have made a lot of money, just enough,

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