Your Legacy

[EdithKeeler]

Maybe this is better under "philosophy," but I'm putting it here because it has to do with how you live your life.

A while back, a VP at our company was getting ready to retire, and he was doing all of these things. I commented to my then-boss, another VP, about it, and wondered out loud why he was putting all of these things in place since he was leaving in just a couple of months. My boss said, "Well, his legacy is here."

I thought at the time that this was a supremely stupid idea. Even more so now. Isn't that the point (one of them, anyway) of a corporation--that the corporation lives on, beyond the individuals that work there? (My company is about 1000 employees, not family owned, financial services industry).

But this idea of a legacy has been popping up in my head lately. What is my legacy? Most people might say their kids are their legacy--I don't have kids. Do I have a legacy? Will I? If I do, what is it? Do I even care? I don't think so. Should I?

Perhaps all this is in my head because I have a birthday coming up. I was thinking about a few friends--one started a charity in Argentina. Another does things for poor kids in Africa.

I definitely don't want my tombstone to read "She was a really good employee for X Corp for 20 years." I don't know if I care if my tombstone reads "She dropped out and became a beach bum at 55." Ok, truth be told, I don't plan on having a tombstone. I've thought about leaving whatever money I have left when I die to my alma mater, endowing the Edith Keeler scholarship for overthinkers and underachievers. But there may not be much money there, if I'm lucky, because it will mean I saved exactly enough.

But in my heart of hearts, the thought of dying in obscurity bothers me a little bit. I mean, history obscures most people, but when I think of the generations who came before me, and that it all ends with me, truth me told I'd like to leave at least a small skid mark in the world, where people would remember me at least for a couple of years after I'm gone.

I don't know how this fits with ERE exactly, except that maybe I'll have more time after I retire to make a difference. But the reality is, I'm pretty lazy.

I'm curious as to others' thoughts as to this idea of legacy.

[stand@desk]

How about living a legacy of personal long term fulfillment.. And that includes allowing your priorities to change as you grow and new people leave and enter your life..I don't think it has to be much more than that..If you are more of the thinker type instead of the builder type..(most of us on here are the thinker types) we don't have to leave builder type legacies..they aren't as important and fulfilling to us. Our fulfillment lives in our ideas.

[lilacorchid]

You can always leave a scholarship or grant set up with the money you have left over.

[george]

Hi Edith, we were both thinking of the same thread and writing it at the same time, weird eh.

My legacy is to live the life I believe in and to be an example of the principle that we can do anything if we believe its worthwhile. Building and sharing our skills, thats what life is really about. So that we can freely give our time and energy in a manner which benefits those we live with or near.

if I live this life, then it may or may not be a role model for others to follow. Only I now know that those I care about do get it and its great to see them follow what they believe in and contribute freely.

[Dragline]

I think its one of those things you are better off not worrying too much about, since it will largely be determined by other people after you are gone. Or to put it another way, if its worth doing, its should be worth it for when you are still alive and not just for legacy purposes.

History has a funny way of burying the currently famous and resurrecting obscure ones.

[Tyler9000]

I've been working in product design for about 14 years now. I've always been excited to see my products make it to market. Some have made it on store shelves and done pretty well. One product in particular is so pervasive that I see someone using an iteration of it nearly every day. Like many designers, I have poured my life into my work, and it has often been quite rewarding.

Thinking back, are these products my legacy? I certainly hope not. Products occupy the hearts of people perhaps for a few months before they're obsolete. The constant innovation treadmill is the reality of the engineering life. These days I imagine building something a little more lasting, with the earned experience that all worldly stuff has an expiration date. Frankly, I think I'm ready to move on from product design.

So I personally no longer believe that legacy can be encapsulated in an object. Not a plaque, a product, a bank account, a charity, or even a child. (Raising a kid is a great and noble task, but they have lives of their own to live). Ultimately, none of that stuff is you.

I'm starting to believe that legacy is more about how you live. The net impact you have on the emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being of others is the greatest legacy (for better or worse) you can leave. The trick is in realizing that you build this every day of your life and in every interaction you have. If you wait until the end, it's too late. And if you think it's something you can buy with charitable works a few days a month or a regular check to a non-profit, you miss the point entirely.

You are your own legacy.

(EDIT) I personally also believe there's a spiritual legacy beyond death, but that's an entirely different discussion. For what's left in the world when you're gone, your actions in life speak louder than the stuff you left behind.

[Ego]

I'm curious as to others' thoughts as to this idea of legacy.

The most basic organisms cling to life. It is something innate within us. When combined with our ability to anticipate and predict the future, it is only natural that we would want to live on beyond our own death. If we can imagine a particular time in the future then we can find pleasure today in the prospect of being remembered after we are gone.

We're in the same boat with regard to genetic legacy. We are the end of the line. There was a time when that bothered me a bit, but that has gradually changed since seeing the finality of death first hand. It put into focus the futility of trying to live beyond death and cheapened the idea of legacy.

Also, I feel as if the desire for legacy is somehow tied up with deriving value or self-worth from what others think of me. I want to not care about that. Whether I am successful at it is another story.

[Ian]

I haven't seen any solid psychological evidence about why humans care about legacy, so I can only consider plausible explanations. It might have something to do with desiring immortality of a sort, or an extension of social obligations, or just the last step in defining yourself by how others think of you. Whatever the case, it's not something I really appreciate.

[george]

perhaps a legacy is anything handed down from the past. Its not necessarily about us as individuals. Our actions now will impact those in the future, whether its cultural, behavioural, environmental etc.

we all have an impact, leave a legacy, whether we consider it or not. Our actions impact on future generations. My grandmothers actions impact upon me, just as those who walked this land before me have impacted me as well.

[IlliniDave]

It's not really something I give much thought to. I suppose I'll exist for a short while in the memories of my children and grandchildren, but even that's fleeting. Hard to care much whether people in the future know my name or not. I'm pretty unremarkable and okay with that. Maybe I can find a way to preserve a small patch of land somewhere as a park or nature preserve. But I don't think I'd name it after me. Mostly I just try to treat others with kindness and hope to contribute to the efforts to get a good karmic snowball going.

[Chad]

Some of my thoughts are very similar to iDave's. I haven't really thought about it much in the traditional sense. Could be that I really don't care or that I haven't found anything outside of family/friends where I hope my memory lives on. And, I think everyone's legacy with family/friends will take care of itself if they lived properly.

Maybe if I cared more about what I did my non-family/friend legacy would matter. I must admit that I have only had one profession that I actually gave a damn about and it would be cool to have a minor legacy in that profession (coaching football). Though, when I think about legacy in that profession I don't think about championships, which would be cool. I think about the impact they can have on others at a personal level.

Overall, I think it comes down to what Dragline said,

...if its worth doing, its should be worth it for when you are still alive and not just for legacy purposes.

I definitely don't want my tombstone to read "She was a really good employee for X Corp for 20 years."

Edith I couldn't agree more. When I was an auditor and everyone was working their ass off doing 15 hour days 6 days a week, I always said the last thing I wanted was for someone to put "Great Auditor/Accountant" on my tombstone. How depressing would that be? Not that I ever plan to have a tombstone, as cemeteries take far too much valuable land from the living right now and are an obvious form of a legacy "try" I don't want.

[Devil's Advocate]

I'm curious as to others' thoughts as to this idea of legacy.

I find the desire to be known, the desire to be famous, the desire to be thought of as good or altruistic or kind or clever or whatever, to be fundamentally base. You are what you are, and you do what you do : and people react as they do to that. I’m not saying ignore others’ reaction, that would be stupid. It is important to use others’ reaction as feedback to examine oneself. But to make others’ reaction the primary motive for one’s action is, as I said earlier, base. And a legacy is just that, taken post-mortem : and to that extent, I find the whole concept of a legacy cretinous.

At another level, a legacy is mortal man’s desperate (and futile) attempt to stave off death. You can’t not die, so you imagine the next best thing would be to “live on” in others’ hearts and minds, by way of your legacy. That’s less base than the earlier motive, and indeed is rather endearing (in so much as all of us can empathize to a degree with it), but it’s still rather pathetic.

Even at its most benign (for example, if I were to will away everything I have—or perhaps work towards building an organization—that does something unarguably good, like feeding starving children or whatever in perpetuity, entirely anonymously and without having this attributed to me personally or to a proxy like my religion or my city or my country or whatever, even then, even at that benign best, something done with the express intention of making that a legacy (as opposed to doing something without thought of legacy and simply having that legacy come about as a matter of course), is rather pathetic. A futile attempt to negate what is inevitable.

So if you ask me, to work for a legacy is endearing but pathetic at best, and base and cretinous at worst.

Just my own (probably eccentric) point of view. Expressed with absolutely no criticism implied towards anyone else’s thoughts on this. (Thus far no one here has said anything that might be antithetical to what I'm saying, rendering my disclaimer largely superfluous. That's one reason [among many others] that I love this site and keep returning here, despite my blog-phobia and general internet-minimalism.)

[leeholsen]

IMO, if you want to leave a legacy; leave it while you are here.

there's 6 billion+ poeple on the planet and you or i making a mark is going to be very unlikely unless it's in a real bad way since most ere'ers are not striving to make multi-millions and leaving behind a charity in your name.

but being an ere'er, you could be the go to guy at a local church or other charity or organization that helps others. if you do enough in something like that; you'll get some good recognition by some in your last days that imo beats seeing your name on a building.

for me, it'll hopefully be helping older and wounded vets when i pull the cord.

[Spartan_Warrior]

FYI, we discussed this a little in the Book Club discussion of Johnny Truant's "Epic" series. The premise in the book "How to Live Forever" was essentially that we live on through our legacies. In this case, "legacy" was used in the way @george used it here: everyone leaves a legacy, regardless of what they do. "My grandmothers actions impact upon me, just as those who walked this land before me have impacted me as well." Everything you do affects something or someone else (in one long, causally linked deterministic sequence of events ).

From this point of view, you don't get to opt out of (or choose) a legacy. Your legacy is simply the collective group of causalities that resulted from your existence.

I find this perspective liberating. It seems to take some of the onus off of me. Rather than actively pursuing a legacy, I believe in pursuing mastery, excellence, and happiness in life such that my achievements naturally leave their own legacy, whatever that may be.

That said, I'll admit to daydreaming that my writing will outlive me. But again, to me, this is not about being remembered per se, at least not as the driving goal; it's about producing the highest quality work, so good that people can't help but remember it. That has less to do with my achieving immortality than it does with achieving mastery and excellence in a skill that means a lot to me.

[jacob]

http://www.amazon.com/review/R32IDLBJN2 ... 0870111841

[JohnnyH]

I always write my responses in txt editor before I read others... By the time I read them all .5 of people here have already put it better than I could've hoped to. On legacy my conclusion is similar to Devil's Advocate's.

I used to think about this more, used to be more ambitious, used to struggle with great questions... Alas, youth! Now I am completely conscious of my own unfathomable insignificance. Most likely humanity will go extinct and our only legacy will be some errant space garbage in a life/intelligence bereft, doomed universe.

So a hobbit's life for me! Tend my garden, drink my ale, read my books... Best I'll likely do for humanity is raise some kids hopefully better than myself.

[llorona]

My legacy is to help future generations of family members remember their ancestors and their roots. Since I've never wanted children, I use the term "family" very loosely to mean anyone related by blood or adoption.

While my ancestors' lives were simple, they were filled with hardship and strife. Their stories represent a tiny fraction of world-changing historical events, from family members who joined the mass exodus from Italy in the 1890's to great-grandparents who were massacred during the Japanese invasion of China during WWII.

These are stories worth preserving. If this fails to happen, no one will remember in a generation or two. For the past decade, I've been compiled photographs, stories, vital records, etc. in a quest to capture and retain my family's stories. This information is available electronically and online, but I'm worried about whether it will be accessible 20, 50, or 100 years from now. My next step is to begin organizing this information into written documents and begin strategically planting or scattering them.

[george]

I've been following the posts and pondering the focus on individualism in terms of legacy.

Jacob posted a link and perhaps heres the two sentences that have meaning for me.

"made no effort to express their individuality through the medium of things; (instead) they produced things through the medium of man".

"The bottom line was that I relaxed, I let myself enjoy the process and I let the objects I made speak for themselves".

thought provoking.

[jacob]

I haven't read that book yet and I only got the reference from Tolpin (he's a famous woodworker), but it sounded intriguing. Then again, I tend to like eastern/[Zen-]Buddhist inspired thought. If you're an super/ego-stoked intellectual, it's nice to be reminded that ego-stoked intellectualism just might be BS

In my experience, it's nice to get the accolades from others but specifically trying to arrange your life according to how other people will judge/value you is fraught with danger and disappointment. It is much much better to simply do something because you feel, morally, or otherwise, compelled to do something. Then do it regardless of what others may think. If they judge it good, good! If they judge it bad, then maybe rethink it somewhat more. [They might be right and you might be wrong] If they don't care, but you still do, you should like what you do enough to keep doing it.

[Dragline]

I'm afraid I don't have a handle on that one, although it sounds familiar.

What I have found intriguing is the application of complexity theory to history. See this book in particular: http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquity-Catastro ... 0609809989

The idea here is the opposite of the Great Man or Great Event theory, which is written by historians in hindsight, but instead there is only a certain probability that the actions of an individual or a particular occurrence will trigger a meaningful historical event or consequence -- like grains of sand falling on a sand pile, you never know which one will trigger an avalanche and how big the avalanche will be.

So while in hindsight we say that the assassination of Arch Duke Francis Ferdinand caused or triggered World War I, it could have been one of myriad happenings that blew the stack, because the situation was primed for an avalanche already. And for every great leader you can think of, there might be hundreds of others who had the same intentions and may have even taken some of the same actions but did not result in some great event or change.

It tells you there is a certain futility about shooting for a particular legacy when you are gone, because there are too many factors outside your control and just plain old luck plays a certain part. I think ancient people understood this much better than modern people do - hence, the ancient concept of "fortune."

While linear thinking is attractive and precise, it often ends up way off the mark except in hindsight.