Legacy

“Legacy.” The word conjures any number of definitions, from grandiose to banal. It’s a chaotic mess of financial instruments, legal definitions, ageist banter, and solemn promises, all wrapped and constrained in six letters. To many, it’s a reminder of what will be, that future state d’affairs where what we’ve struggled so hard to gain in this life is proffered to the digital halls of those who follow. 

We believe that if we’re lucky, there’s a bit of cash in the kitty, investments that have outstripped the whipsaw motions of the world markets. Similarly, if we’re unlucky, there are just memories and vapors, whispered reminders of how our luck can turn in just a moment. We believe that there’s no right way to think of “legacy” except as being a flip of a coin, a toss of a leaf in the ever-blowing winds of life, and existential fate.

I’ve had occasion to think long and hard about what “legacy” means. It’s partly due to staring down the long, rifled barrel of legal comeuppance and partly to the necessity of how best to take care of my children ‘ere I should pass. It’s a “both/and” contemplation, as much as I’d prefer it to be an “either/or” situation. C’est la vie, as the bard would say.

So, what exactly is a legacy?

I don’t know that an Oxford dictionary definition would be all that helpful at this moment, given that a “legacy” is whatever we choose to make it. It’s the tailings of our heavy labour in soil and earth, the blinking lights and whirring platters of our technological infrastructures of days past, an instantiation of reams of papers in dark, dry halls of a town hall archive somewhere. Legacies are written every day in the invisible ink of humanity, scratched across the sands and mountains of our earth by our toothed machines, and captured in a scene by devices that preserve moments on sensors, ne’er to be seen again. 

In a conversation with a mentee the other day, the subject of children came up. This conversation twisted and turned from birth to growth to education to what I, as an older, cishet white male in New England, viewed as being important. At that moment, my legacy was to relay the mistakes and miracles of my parenting, in the off-chance that somewhere within the stories and whitespace, there’d be something, anything of worth. This conversation, then, became part of my legacy, my “leaving behind,” my offering to the generations coming of whatever conventional wisdom and fuckups I may have.

Another aspect of “legacy” is simply this: acceptance. The stories, narratives, actions, and disturbances to society that generations preceding mine have left are their legacy. We may decry their choices, aims, and outcomes (rightly so, I might add), but what has been done is done. It then becomes ours to incorporate and change as we see fit. As a parent, I’m hoping that what I’m doing with my life in the here and now benefits my children and that the decisions I’ve made in employment and everything else have a gross benefit to society versus the alternative. When my children are of age to take on the mantle of society and weave their own stories and paths, it will be up to them to determine the value of what I and others of my generation have done. 

The stories of legacy continue whether we like it or not. Apropos of everything, the legacy of violent fascist nationalism, for example, is making a resurgence in American politics, propounded entirely by a class of citizenry that are, in no small sense of irony, the inheritors of an immigration story from history. They’ve forgotten (or have chosen to willfully ignore) the legacy of their familial stories in coming to the New World. Their inconsiderate approach to legacy belies a bubbling cauldron of ignominy that they’ll pass along to their progeny. The shadow cast by their actions will, in turn, be either a cloak worn by the many or a cast-off reminder of our terrible natures. In either case, a choice will be made regarding the value of these moments.

In all of my wonderment, I’m left with the understanding that my greatest successes and failures, my fascinations and fuck-ups, my very existence on this sphere orbiting the sun are a legacy that I cannot escape. That I’m here now, in the flesh and preserved in 0’s and 1’s, means that a legacy has been created, a paragraph in the everlong story of humanity has begun to be written, and a note has been sung by celestial voices somehow, somewhere. I’m a speck of dust that somehow has imparted meaning to words on a page, money in the bank, and the emotive love shown between one person and another. 

Perhaps you, too, in understanding yourself, will find that your legacy is both an acceptance and a necessary creation. It’s wrought from your own hands from the richness of what came before you. It’s given life through the words you impart to it, the actions you take, the moments you hold on to for dear life, and the people you impress yourself upon. It’s carved from mountains of ideology and fueled by coffee and good intentions. Your legacy is, simply put, who and what you are and chose to be. And, dear reader, that is all one could ever hope for.

May it ever be so.