What Will Your Legacy Be?
What Does it Mean to Leave a Legacy?
To leave a legacy is a heavy topic, which is probably why most people don’t think about it until they advance in age, if they consider their legacy at all. More likely for some people is to skate through life doing whatever they do until they don’t do it anymore, after which their legacy chips fall where they may.
But what does it mean to leave a legacy? In our culture, a legacy is often considered in financial terms, some amount of money or property, a bequest. That’s fine, but isn’t it more than that, and more than a chronology of events, of where we came from, where we traveled or what we did to earn a living?
To me, to leave a legacy is to leave a mark, a lasting impression, some evidence that I was here and that I made a positive difference in the world, that I influenced another person’s thinking or behavior in a positive way, and helped to shape a meaningful life for someone else.