According to definition, legacy is: “a gift … anything handed down from the past.” With that as the operational definition, do you know what your legacy is? What gifts are you giving? What are you handing down? Yes, it can be tangible items and these can be ‘memory points’ for the recipient, but of greater importance are the intangible gifts – how you live your life in your glass bowl, the behaviors you express, your attitudes. These intangible gifts are of a far greater value. Equally important is to whom are you leaving your legacy – are there many people? Do you have specific bequests?
I suspect that we tend to take too lightly the intangible legacies that are handed down to us – both the gift recipient, and the gift giver. For the person who is the recipient, it’s often in the times of sharing stories about the life of the gift giver that we begin to see and appreciate what they did and what they’ve imparted. It can also cause us to consider what we are saying with our lives. Everyone is a model… everyone. Whether we like it or not, we are models of what is truly important in our lives. Do you realize that this may be even more important than any tangible item?
In considering the legacy we are leaving, we need to consider our lives and what we are saying by/in them. Is this what we want to say? If there were no tangible gifts we could impart, is our life something we could want others to know? Do our actions say: ‘honorable’ – he/she kept their word? Do they say: ‘faithful’ – they lived their beliefs? Perhaps our actions say: ‘joyful’ – they spread joy and happiness wherever they went. Sadly they also say our negative behaviors as well but maybe they also said: ‘forgiving’ – they sought forgiveness for the things they did that hurt others and they offered forgiveness to those who hurt them.
There are so many aspects to ‘legacy’ but perhaps the greatest gift is what they do in us, the gift giver. They can cause us to reassess what it is we are saying with our lives. This analysis can give us insights that can become the basis for our change, where needed. And equally can reinforce what it is we are doing and saying. Legacy is never a ‘then’ thing, once we’re gone. It should be a now realization so we can leave those legacy memories.
