legacy

I’ve been watching tv shows with the family on this holiday. Mostly haven’t been my cup of tea, but I can keep busy of an evening, so it doesn’t really matter lol

One of the shows dealt with a family dynasty and inter family wars. The message being you had to be prepared to “die for the Family”. The Family was the all-important thing. And each generation was determined to leave the business/money/prestige to the next. Each father wanting his legacy to be more money and power for the generation coming behind him

It got me to wondering about what we want our legacies to be. Or do we in fact, want to leave a legacy at all?

I am sure the rich, the famous, the powerful all want their legacies to be Memorable. To have made their Mark on the World. And maybe that is enough of a legacy

But my travels have taken me through cathedrals and graveyards. And amongst all those graves, some way more famous than others, I have been most moved by the humble…. “She was a gentlewoman of kindly nature”, “He was much loved by his family”, “His generosity knew no bounds”

These are the legacies that interest me. I’ve seen the graves of the most famous royals – but surely the start of their legacies were an accident of birth? I don’t deny that some of them lived extraordinary lives, full of interest and intrigue. And their fame (or infamy) is based in being famous by birth. Show me the person who comes from nothing and leaves their mark on the world. And that is the person I am interested in. Or the person who lived a quiet, unremarkable life – except that they were much loved by family and friends. Whose legacy was tears at their death; conversations about them, long after they have passed. Whose very ordinariness, is their legacy.

We cannot all be rich or famous. We cannot all live lives that are loud and well known. Some of us have to be just, well normal. But in that lies our legacy. I have visited the ruins of old villages. 100s of years old. Those regular, normal lives, that are now studied by archaeologists and visited by 1000s of people. We want to know how the average person lived. We want to compare our lives to theirs. To marvel how they overcame the hurdles that life threw at them. We find a connection in the familiar, in lives that are basically the same us ours. Families raising families. People working to earn enough to live. Births, deaths and marriages. Family names and ties handed down through the generations.

To be remembered.

Our legacy is always how we are remembered. How we lived our life will determine our legacy.

Those born famous, or rich, have a legacy that will be talked about by strangers for generations. How they are talked about depends on how they lived their lives. They are remembered for their deeds, amplified by their fame.

The rest of us? Our legacies are richer. Because we are only remembered by those who really knew us. Whose lives we touched. Whose lives we enriched. Personal connections. Shared memories

How we are remembered is our legacy. We can’t choose how we are remembered. But we can choose to live our best lives, so that those memories is rich and full, and maybe last a generation or two…

That, I hope, is to be my legacy.. To just be remembered, kindly, by those who knew me…

Whatungarongaro te tangata toitū te whenua

As man disappears from sight, the land remains