Heritage - Baden-Powell's Last Message
| Category: | Scouting Heritage |
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| Notes: | For a closing campfire, Founder's Day (February 22), an aging-out farewell, or any reflective moment. Quotes from the letter Baden-Powell left to be opened after his death in 1941. Part of a series on Scouting heritage - see the other heritage minutes in this category. |
Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting, died in Kenya in January of 1941. Among his papers, they found a letter he had written years earlier and saved for that day. It was addressed to the Scouts of the world.
He didn't use his last message to talk about badges, or ranks, or knots. He wrote about happiness.
He told the Scouts, "I have had a most happy life and I want each one of you to have a happy life too." He said that happiness doesn't come from being rich, or from being successful, or from getting everything you want.
Then he wrote the lines that Scouts around the world still repeat:
"But the real way to get happiness is by giving out happiness to other people. Try and leave this world a little better than you found it, and when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate you have not wasted your time but have done your best."
That's where our habit of leaving a campsite better than we found it comes from. It started as one small piece of a much bigger idea: leave everything better. Your campsite. Your troop. Your town. The people around you.
Baden-Powell is buried in Kenya, within sight of Mount Kenya. Carved on his headstone is a simple trail sign: a circle with a dot in the center. Every Scout who learned trail signs knows what it means.
"I have gone home."