What is lasting?

What really has the capacity to weather the storms of life and pass from generation to generation?  It certainly causes one to wonder sometimes.

One of the themes of my life has become the preservation of memories.  I have a room devoted to the effort of maintaining photographs and life stories to be passed on to the next generation.  I have bookshelves filled to capacity with scrapbooks chronicling the lives of Brian and Ardith Haws and their posterity.

Are these efforts in vain?  Does it really matter?  Will these books ever be pulled from the shelves to come alive for future generations?

I guess the question really comes down to this:  Can we leave our mark on the world?  Do our lives and our stories matter enough to try and preserve them?

I read something that prompted these questions.  "But whatsoever things we write upon anything save it be upon plates (of precious metal) must perish and vanish away..."

So the things I write and send out into cyberspace surely don't qualify as having any lasting value.  Then why do it?  I do know that a few of you are reading my ramblings, and certainly more than have ever looked at the scrapbooks that are gathering dust on my shelves.

Which, then, are of more value?  Or are they equally fleeting?

The same scripture from above that spoke of things perishing and vanishing away, also spoke of the need to "write a few words...which shall give our children...a small degree of knowledge concerning us."  (Jacob 4:2, The Book of Mormon)

I will take the challenge to leave a few words to my future grandchildren so they might have at least a small degree of knowledge concerning me.  And as ever, I will try to preserve them in some lasting way.  But I suppose most of my efforts will probably rot in attics or basements 'til someone has the courage to haul them off to the landfill.

Perhaps therein lies the difference between "the small plates" and "the large plates".

What are my small plates?