Why the “Circle-Dash” symbol:

What exactly is the value of our lives? Better yet, what is the value of YOUR life to others?
I always wondered why Rick Warren’s “The Purpose Driven Life” devotional book sold over 30 million copies in 5 short years (2002-2007). Think about it, the book offers readers a 40-day personal spiritual journey, and presents what Warren says are “God's five purposes for human life on Earth…” and "a blueprint for Christian living in the 21st Century...”

For all of us, there will be two sets of four-digit numbers connected eternally by a “hyphen” that will someday measure the purposefulness of all of our lives. Unfortunately, many of us pay more attention to those two numbers, while never realizing the most important is the symbolic dash that separates them. Though we have no control over either of those two numbers, there is one aspect we do have control over, and although it is the smallest physical aspect of this pair of numbers, it is the most significant (-).

You see, that “little dash” that separates your birth date from your death date is the very same dash that separates EXTRA-ordinary men and women from the ordinary. For Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi 1869 -1948; John Fitzgerald Kennedy, it was 1917-1963; for Martin Luther King Jr., it was 1929-1968; and for Jackie Robinson, it was 1919-1972; for Christian evangelist William Franklin "Billy" Graham, Jr. (born November 7, 1918), the fullness of his life is yet to be measured. As of April 25, 2010, when Graham met with President Barack Obama, he has been a spiritual adviser to twelve United States presidents going back to Harry Truman. Graham has probably preached in person to more people around the world than any other preacher in modern history. According to his staff, as of 1993 more than 2.5 million people had "stepped forward at his crusades to accept Jesus Christ as their personal Savior"; and as of 2008, Graham's lifetime audience, including radio and television broadcasts, topped 2.2 billion.

That little dash encompasses all that you are from your first breath to your last, and it is the moral measurer of the purposefulness of all of our lives, the substance for all to judge whether every breath between your first and your last was insignificant or purposeful.

Birth gives all of us an opportunity to create, manifest, or elude destiny and purpose, while funerals serve as evaluations of a person's "life-dash," and an expression of one's impact or lack, thereof, on the planet and the people therein.

So “the circle” around our dash places an emphasis on how insignificant or purposeful our lives will be, and to place an emphasis on how we are presently living out our collective "dashes." Apathy has become the Cancer of our Culture (the way we live on a daily basis) and too many of us accept mediocrity in terms of how much we make our lives count our immediate family and for others' sake.
Often times we do not see the selfishness in our ways until we come to grips with how much great people give of themselves and how little we seem to selflessly devote to others.

So ask yourself - will your dash, one day, be nothing more than a hyphen separating the years of your birth and death; or, will you choose this day to make your life count for something great on this earth?

The "Circle-Dash" is a unique and personal concept and can only be limited by the two numbers surrounding it. Those of us who choose to live for self will be remembered, even if only by birth date and death date. However, those of us who choose to make every day count for the sake of others will be remembered, most assuredly for that "dash" that exists between those two dates.