编者按：在当下，越来越多的人被时代潮流裹挟着亦步亦趋地赶路；而这种被手机和电脑屏幕占据的生活，真的是我们存在于这个世界上的意义所在吗？在一段“下线”的日子里，本文作者重新思考了人生的价值。

I’ve been mostly off-line for the past seven days. It might not sound like much, but that’s the longest time I’ve been away from my constant hustle and my laptop in years.

While overseas, I spent a lot of time reading, thinking and letting my mind explore life outside of myself.

I think I’ve become dependent on that connection--to feel like I’m living concurrently with the rest of my universe, to feel like I’m making progress, to feel like I am somebody and I’m making something…

And I’ve been asking myself, recently, what contribution that constant connection and that grind is making to the world.--the bigger world, not the one living inside my 6 inch screen.

I was bouncing through a Malaysian jungle in a rickety bus, reading a book by Hillary Clinton--she was talking about the understanding she reached with a Chinese diplomat, that living was about leaving the world better for our kids than it was when we got here. It was enough that I started thinking about how I’ll leave the world.

As we drove through the heat, the driver started telling me that the people where he grew up would plant a tree whenever their family had a new child. He said it was a superstition that if the tree grew up strong, so too would the child. But as I listened, it didn’t sound too superstitious at all.

If the tree grew up strong, if it helped the environment and the community, then surely it would help the child also.

I stopped to ask myself--what are the trees I’m planting in my life? What are the contributions that will be here when I’m gone?

I don’t want to reach the end of the line and have an untended garden to point to. Instead, I want a legacy that is full of the work of ages, full of things that may not even fully bear fruit until after I’m long gone.

I want to measure my life in the trees I’ve planted.

Life isn’t meant to be coasted through or lack meaning. It’s meant to be expended on things that matter to us and more than just us. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned while away, it’s that losing sight of that can push me to lose my way.