This is the beginning of my third year writing this column for this website. Sometimes the column is widely read, sometimes it’s probably not read much at all. But it serves a very real purpose, like all columns, blogs, and other types of written communication - it provides a record of my thoughts at a given point in time. I’ll be more specific….

I just finished reading a very lengthy biography about the magician Harry Houdini. He was perhaps the first American icon/celebrity to achieve the international fame that he did during a time when mass communication didn’t really exist. The two authors of this book go into painstaking detail to cover almost every aspect of Houdini’s life - so much so that I imagine the book must have taken many years to write. What is so fascinating about Houdini and others of his time (he lived just over 50 years from the last part of the 19th century into the early part of the 20th century) is that much of what we know about them - their “legacy” if you will - is based on letters they wrote. We have recorded history of Houdini’s thoughts and actions. Although the telegraph existed, the telephone was not yet common and there certainly wasn’t email, the internet, or the sophisticated recording devices of today. Therefore, communication was primarily through letters… letters written by hand on a piece of paper.

At the suggestion of psychologist/friend Michael Murrell over two years ago, I began this column as a way of putting my thoughts down in written form. Not being that great or excited about journaling, this was my next best option. What I have realized is that it will also serve as a written record for loved ones, long after I’m gone. So what Houdini and many others have taught us is quite simple. How we will be remembered is not only determined by our actions and the lives we have touched, it is also determined by what is recorded - written and otherwise (film, audio, etc.).

Regardless of how we each affect history, we are part of it. Like it or not, we all will be remembered for something, whether good, bad, or both. And like Houdini unknowingly taught us, by writing it down we get to put in our two cents as to what history has to say about us.