The Story of Alfred Nobel: Changing His Legacy
June 26, 2009 by dr. lam
As we transition to a new blog series, I thought it would be great to talk briefly about a man, Alfred Nobel, who changed the world with the Nobel Prize and is remembered especially for the Peace Prize. However, where did he make his fortune? The answer surprisingly was in dynamite. Quite the contrary to how the world remembers him.
Nobel developed nitroglycerine and then was able to harness that energy more safely in the form of his invention he called dynamite. Nitroglycerine took the life of his brother Emil in the process. At the age of 55 living in Paris, Nobel read the account of his own death in the newspaper’s obituary when in fact it was his brother Ludwig who had died with the newspaper confusing the two siblings’ names. Alfred saw that the words used to describe him were “merchant of death” and “dynamite king”, which left a bitter taste in his mouth and forced him to reexamine what his true legacy would be.
At that moment, he saw that his life would be remembered for everything terrible so he set up a private will that established that his money would go to prizes in chemistry, physics, medicine, literature and peace (with the economics prize started in the 1960s) so today he is remembered as the father of the peace prize, the exact opposite of what his life and business stood for.
What will your obituary say about you? What legacy will you be leaving behind when you pass away? How will you be remembered? What are you doing to secure that legacy in the hearts and minds of those around you? Are you contributing to your legacy each and every day or are you leaving nothing behind?
I think we all can see a much larger vision for what we want in our lives. I hope that the one word that will be associated with me will be “healing”. I know I love my family and friends a lot. I know that I am passionate to the point of being crazy about my work. But my true work is in healing those individuals with whom I have the honor to come into contact. I told a woman yesterday who came from Florida for my services and who had some bad eyelid surgery (3 in total) before me that I fixed with fat grafting, “Your journey has ended with me and it will now begin with me.” The journey that ended concerned her plastic surgery; and the journey that began was her healing through my blogs. I think these blogs are fundamentally about healing: healing the wounds of those around me and also healing my own wounds. So I close this week with the message that we opened it with, i.e., healing, and I look forward to commencing anew some wonderful blog adventures in the coming weeks, months, and years.
Namaste,
SML
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4 Responses to “The Story of Alfred Nobel: Changing His Legacy”
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That is a great story!
I’m not too concerned about what legacy I leave behind in this life as long as it’s not a bad one, more so concerned about where I’m going…lol
Dr. Lam, I have no doubt that you will leave behind a legacy of healing, as I’m sure everyone already thinks of you associated with that. You’ll probably be famous too.
Look forward to the blogs in the future!
thanks. well, i think our current actions are the most important but i also hope that we can leave a small legacy behind. just a cool idea!
Hey, blog buddies, let’s have some fun with this! Let’s all get gravatars! Nord, I’m dying to see your glamorous head!
agreed heather.