THE TESTAMENT

                                                                                   A Legacy Worth Preserving

A Personal Testament is an opportunity to look back over a lifetime, gather what it has taught you, and preserve what you believe is worth passing on.  The perspective of looking back matters.  Experiences that once seemed important may look different decades later.  Beliefs may have deepened, changed, or been abandoned.  Mistakes may have revealed lessons that could not be seen when they were made.

A Testament is not a legal will, and it is not simply an autobiography.  You do not have to tell the complete story of your life or create a chronological record of everything that happened to you.  Instead, a Testament asks a different question: What have I discovered that is worth leaving behind?  The answer will be different for every person.  Your Testament might include the principles that guided you, beliefs you arrived at or abandoned, experiences that changed you, mistakes that taught you something, questions you never completely answered, relationships that shaped you, moments you still do not fully understand, things you wish you had known earlier, and wisdom you hope someone else might find useful.  It is your opportunity to decide what, from everything you have experienced and thought about, deserves to survive you.

The word "testament" is familiar to us from the phrase "last will and testament," a document that determines what will happen to a person's material possessions after death.  Larry's vision uses the word in a different but related way.

A Personal Testament is also concerned with what a person leaves behind, but with a different kind of inheritance.  Instead of asking only what will become of our possessions, it asks what should become of our thoughts, experiences, beliefs, questions, lessons, stories, and wisdom. In simplest terms, a Personal Testament is a reflection on a life, composed for posterity.  It is an opportunity to consider what a lifetime has taught you and decide what, from everything you have experienced and thought about, is worth leaving behind.

Most of what we know about people who lived before us comes through fragments.  We may have photographs, names, dates, possessions, family stories, or perhaps a few letters.  We often know what happened to them without knowing what they thought about what happened.  A Testament can preserve something different.  It allows a person to speak for themselves.

A grandchild might know that her grandfather started a business, but not what he learned from succeeding or failing at it.  A son might know where his mother lived and what work she did without ever knowing what she regretted, what frightened her, what changed her mind, or what she came to understand about love, friendship, faith, work, family, or growing older.  Those reflections are part of a life too.  Unless someone deliberately preserves them, they are especially easy to lose.

There is no required list of subjects that every Testament must contain.  One person may write extensively about family and relationships.  Another may be most interested in work, faith, ideas, mistakes, discoveries, or questions that occupied a lifetime.  Some Testaments may contain long stories.  Others may be collections of shorter reflections.  A Testament might preserve cherished memories and family stories, but it can also preserve difficult experiences, changes of mind, uncertainty, disagreement, humor, failure, ordinary moments, and questions that remain unresolved.  The purpose is not to create an idealized account of a life.  It is to preserve what you think is worth saying.

 Although a Testament is created as a reflection on a life, the material that eventually becomes part of it may have been created throughout that lifetime.  You may already have some of yours.  A letter written many years ago may express something better than you could recreate it today.  A journal entry may capture what you thought while an experience was actually happening.  A story you have repeatedly told your family may contain something you want future generations to know.  Photographs, recordings, essays, correspondence, Pre-Testamental Reflection Logs, or other writings may preserve experiences and thoughts that you later decide belong in your Testament.

These materials are not themselves your Testament.  They are part of the record of your life from which your final Testament can eventually be drawn.  When the time comes to look back over a lifetime, they can help you remember not only what happened, but what you thought and believed at different points along the way, what changed, what endured, and what you ultimately decided was worth passing on.

A Testament is not a declaration that you figured everything out.  Some of the most valuable things you leave behind may be the questions you continued to wrestle with.  You may have changed your mind repeatedly.  You may see something very differently at eighty than you did at forty.  You may recognize mistakes without knowing what you should have done instead.  You may have convictions you can explain clearly and others you cannot.  Those things belong in a Testament too.  Future readers do not need a flawless version of you.  A Testament gives them the opportunity to encounter a thinking person whose understanding developed over the course of a real life.

 For many people, a Testament will be first and foremost a family legacy.  It may preserve stories, experiences, beliefs, lessons, counsel, photographs, and reflections that children, grandchildren, and later generations would otherwise never know.  It offers something different from genealogy or a record of what happened.  It allows future family members to encounter something of how a person thought about the life they lived.

But a Testament need not matter only to family.  Someone may want to bear witness to a period of history they experienced, preserve lessons learned through unusual circumstances, explain beliefs or convictions they spent a lifetime considering, offer counsel drawn from experience, or leave behind an idea they believe deserves further thought.  What one person learned through an ordinary life may someday prove meaningful to someone with no connection to that person at all.

That is one of the possibilities Larry imagined for the Testament Society.  Written words can travel farther through time than their authors ever will.  A person creating a Testament cannot know who may eventually read it, what circumstances that reader may be facing, or whether something preserved there may speak to a question being asked generations later.  The author may never know what influence, if any, those words ultimately have.

A Testament therefore offers the possibility of leaving something beyond possessions and even beyond memories.  It allows a person to preserve what they came to believe was worth saying and entrust it to people they love, to future generations, and perhaps to someone they could never have imagined would one day read it.

You do not need to know everything you want your Testament to contain before you begin.  Begin with one memory.  One conviction.  One mistake.  One question.  One experience you still think about.  One thing you learned that you wish someone had told you sooner.

Then follow where it leads.  CREATE YOUR TESTAMENT 

Creating a Testament is only part of the idea.  What has been gathered must also survive if it is to reach the people who come later.  The Testament Society envisions a permanent Testament Library where Testaments can be preserved according to the wishes of their authors and, over time, become part of a growing inheritance of human experience and reflection.  EXPLORE THE TESTAMENT LIBRARY 

Start with the Testament Starter Guide