Your name; the single most important component of your life, value your reputation...

One day at a symposium the speaker after speaking for sometime decided to throw in a teaser in a form of a question. He asked " What is the single most important thing to you?"
There were so many people talking so none could be heard. He suggested that anyone who wanted to answer should rather raise the hand. There were several answers coming in; "my family", "My passion", my profession, another said "my job" and "my belief" yet says another...

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The speaker listened to the answers for a while and then pronounced that the answers were all wonderful but there was a single most important that was been left out.
Now everyone was anxious to hear what the speaker had to say and they decided not to continue with the random answers.
The speaker reluctantly took the mike and delay for a few seconds, the hall was now as silent as the grave yard and he said "Your single most important thing is your name". The entire symposium was thrown into a cloud of murmur after he said this.
While some were nodding in agreement, others still stood by their point.

Now lets consider this;

One day I saw a Facebook ad on google and I asked myself whether there was someone on the planet earth who uses the internet and yet had not heard of Facebook? Why then were they still spending millions of dollars on ads?

Have you ever wondered why someone would get a Gucci wear at $1000 when when they could as well grab a couple of decent ones at $40?

Why do people have to struggle to acquire the next upgrade of their handheld devices when in fact they have not out used the functions of the old module?

I could continue with this questions but I think I should pause here to make a point.
But before I do let's consider these;
Hope you know of the franchise system in business where a company would make their devices for example and seek a Samsung brand on it and are ready to pay royalties worth millions. Why?

If I mention @dan, everyone knows who he is yet I will not have to provide a picture or mention his family or passions even though there are 1000s of 'dan's here. Our name is the storage device of our entire life's work. You could as well define name as a compression algorithm that stores the entire recording of an individual's life time.
When you hear Adolf Hitler something comes to your mind which is as a result of his actions a couple of centuries ago stored in the name.

Several people have died in the process of effecting a change in the world;
Carl Scheele (1742-1786) was a chemist who discovered molybdenum, tungsten, manganese and chlorine and arguably oxygen. He died at the age of 44 by heavy metal toxicity.

Alexander Bogdanov (1873-1928) was a Russian physician, economist, philosopher, natural scientist, science fiction writer, poet, teacher, politician, revolutionary, an early pioneer of cybernetics and organizational science, and founder of the world's first institution devoted entirely to blood transfusions — the Soviet Institute for Blood Transfusion, which he opened in 1926

He later died after transfusing himself for the 11th time unfortunately with blood infected with malaria and tuberculosis which caused him his life.

You might have heard of Marie Curie, Malclom Casadaban of Chicago, Richard Dim of northern California institute for research who in trying to discover a vaccine against meningitis ended up dying from an infection caused by the same bacteria strain he was working on and so on....

These people did not lose their lives because they did not know of the risks involved with their work neither did they die because they were so tied of living. Most of them worked knowing that even if they lost their lives in the process of making the world a better place their names will live on.

No matter how much you have seen or heard from vampire movies, fact is that there has not been a single known immortal body ever. But can you begin to number immortal names?
People are happy dying if they know their legacy survived and in which form does legacy live on? Did I hear name? Oh yes, it's the name that stores legacy. This just about how important your name can be.
If not for the work of archaeologist, we would not have an idea as to whether Socrates was tall or short, fat or slim and we wouldn't care much because all that is not important but the name which is a store of what he had done with his life.

I'm sure something pops up if you hear Kwame Nkurumah, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Ghandi, George Washington, Issac Newton, Robert Koch, Charles Darwin, Rodolf and it goes on... Do I have to provide a picture or a biography for you to know who they are?

Mohammed (SAW) Jesus Christ (PBUH), Moses, David, Ibrahim and more... the names lives on and will continue to live till the end of time but can we trace their bodies?

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As said on Business insider,

Collectively, the top 200 advertisers in the United States spent a record $137.8 billion on advertising in 2014, up 2% year on year, according to Ad Age's annual "200 Leading National Advertisers" report.

All these companies are doing this in efforts to let you know their name. A name can be worth a 100, 1000, 10000 or 1 billion billion depending on what value is stored in it. Why did Yahoo try acquiring Facebook in 2004 at the cost of over a billion bucks?
Is it that Yahoo programmers could not build a social media to function like Facebook?
Of course not, it was the name.

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That is just how much a name can be worth. Just those string of letters. I'm sure if individuals were to be rated some names may be worth more than these companies seen above. Did I hear Bill Gates?

How did they get there?

Through planning, hard work, dedication, foresight but most importantly persistence. All the names you hear in this article were people who had to go all out to live it behind. They were people who were ready to do what it took even if it could leave physical harm on their mortal bodies. They were those who were bold enough to look negativity in the face and say, to hell with you, I am effecting change. They were people who were ready to sacrifice their sleep to actually do something.
Now all of those sacrifices is not stored in their passions, family, businesses, job or professions but in their names.

I think you can now help me agree with the speaker when he said " Your name is the most important property that you have".
On Steemit here, we are all trying to build some reputation of course except @berniesanders but for a reason.
We cant eat the reputation but that is what is attached to our name and almost everything depends on it.
your name is your everything, protect it with all your might.