Legacy

One question has tormented me for most of my adult life and, in fact, has influenced a lot of my decisions: What will be my legacy after I’m gone? Who will remember me, and how will I be remembered. It’s a sad perspective, I know, but a realistic way of thinking none-the-less.

Family isn’t enough— they remember for maybe two generations, and then you’re forgotten. How many remember their great grandparents? I’d venture a guess and say almost no one.

So I became a teacher. And yes, it’s certainly true that teachers are in it for the outcome, not the income. And an asset of that outcome is that a lot of people will remember you. The conundrum is that again, like family, they will only remember you for their lives, best case scenario.

So I became a writer. I think maybe that’s the “write” (groan) track. My writing will live on long after I’m gone; long after my family is gone, and their families after that. I mean, we still read and study Shakespeare, and that was from 400+ years ago.

Although there's no sittable shade here...

Writing is like planting a tree. Sometimes it grows, and you get to enjoy its shade. Sometimes it grows more slowly, and that’s shade will be enjoyed by future shade-sitters. Sometimes, the tree is like Methuselah, the bristlecone pine, and people 5,000 years later will enjoy its shade.

For a writer, the point is that popularity is not necessarily achieved in your own time most of the time, and that is O.K.A.Y. as far as your legacy goes. By it's very definition, a legacy is, "something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor from the past" (Merriam-Webster).

Me at book signing in Philly.

The fact that you ultimately receive no significant recognition for your efforts in your own lifetime is almost the goal, or rather, becomes the goal, although recognition of that kind wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing of course. Writers write because they have to; there's something inside of them that they need to get out, in that specific fashion. But they also don't write in a vacuum, and to receive accolades directly is nice, be it in the form of an audience, or even better: a paying audience.

The bottom line, however, is that someone after my grandchildren will know who I am, or was. My ideas have been committed to permanent media, and somewhere, someway, somehow, they will continue to exist, long after any direct memory of me evaporates in the dustbin of history.

Food for thought. What will your legacy be? Will it be genetic, in which case no one in the future will know of you except by the genes you pass down through your family? And that's okay-- the vast majority of people will go this route. Or will it be something more substantial-- will you build something? Say something? Do something? Anything that will be around centuries from now? What say you?

© Ray Cattie