Inspiration from a Rabbit Who Left His Mark on the World

I was sitting on the floor today when I noticed some little teeth marks along the bottom draw of a bookshelf.

I knew just who had left them. For while Bertie is gone from my life, his little penchant for taking a sneaky chew on things he really had no business touching, confronts me daily. He never ate any of these things but he did like to test the waters and see what he could get away with. However much I bunny-proofed the house, and however many of his own chew toys he was given, he still from time to time liked to claim my property as his own.

When I saw the marks today, it made me smile, and then it made me cry. For even though he has been gone for over four years now, I still miss him every day.

However, for some reason it also made me think about what we leave behind. Our legacy, if you want to call it that.

We can get caught up in that so much sometimes can’t we? Some people want the legacy of fame and to be remembered by the wider world. Others want their local community, family or friends to recall them — fondly of course. I am the only child of an only child and I have no children of my own. I think fame has passed me by; unless of course I end up on one of those lists of people who only did something remarkable once they reached the second stage of their life. Somehow I think it unlikely.

Maybe my words will live on. Perhaps someone will read an article of mine in the year 2040 and wonder just what made that Alison girl tick. Maybe, maybe not.

I think the bottom line is I will be swiftly forgotten. Maybe you will too. Maybe not by your children or your grandchildren. But time marches on and how much do we really know about the lives of our great-grandparents, or great-great-grandparents? Of course there are exceptions, but they are few and far between.

Even the famous people we celebrate, we know very little about the inner workings of their minds. We can read a biography and find out more about when they did what, but is that the whole story? Autobiographies tell us more, but are we really getting an unbiased account, or is the author an unreliable witness to their own life. After all, they can only give us their side of any account. Do we really get from these accounts the passions they felt, the fears. The times they laughed until they felt like they couldn’t breathe and the times they cried over the tiny teeth marks of a loved and lost rabbit.

Sitting on the floor today I realized something, what does it really matter what we leave behind? More important is how we live in the moment. Maybe a smile, a kind deed, or money or time given is our legacy.

Maybe the pure joy we sometimes feel in unexpected moments is better than any legacy. We can get so caught up in who we need to be or what we need to do, that we forget we actually need to live.

Bertie never forgot to live. That’s all he did. He didn’t worry about leaving his mark on the world, he just enjoyed that cheeky nibble on the wood and that quick jump of joy when it went unnoticed. Unnoticed until I found his (literal) mark on the world today of course.

Maybe we need to do the same. Worry less about how people will remember us, and instead focus on our own jumps of joy.