The dash is how you make a difference for yourself and the world from the beginning to the end.Īs a whole, people need to step back and appreciate the simple things in life that bring us happiness and joy. It encompasses everything about you, who you are, who you loved, and who loved you. What matters is what’s in between those dates - the dash. Those two days are the shortest days of your entire life. When you die, there are two dates on your tombstone, the date you were born and the date you died. Calls were coming in from all over about Lindas’ poem.

The on-air personality read the poem on the air, and it became an instant hit. She took a copy of the finished poem and on a lark faxed it (yes, that’s right she faxed it) to a syndicated Atlanta radio show. So Linda decided to sit down and put paper to pen (this was 1996 after all), and she wrote The Dash. Linda thought to herself, “This is it? This is all we get?” To Linda, there were too many people trying to make a living and not enough people trying to make a life. A strict work environment where everyone was always on edge. The story goes that Linda was working in corporate America at a big corporation under conditions that most of us can identify with. I’m not sure what rock I’ve been living under, but it took me until today to discover this thought-provoking yet straightforward poem. In 1996 Linda Ellis wrote a poem called The Dash.

The dash poem text