Legacy has been on my mind a lot lately. My kids growing older, and me as well, has led me to realize at some point what we leave behind is all that there will be of us. At 37, there are days that I feel ancient, and others that I feel 18, but either way I can’t use it as an excuse to not do my best. Satchel Paige might have said “Age is a case of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it don’t matter.” but some part of me knows he still aged and died. Perhaps for the sake of this post, the quote can be revamped as “Legacy is a case of meaning over matter. If you don’t make meaning, you legacy won’t matter.”

I know we all mean something in life. Loved or reviled, we all add to the lives of family, friends, co-workers and clients. These daily reminders that we were alive, like the snow on a Winter’s day, will fade in time. Once the echo of our eulogy has faded, what will be your ambassador to the world of the living? Will it be the joy you brought, the bridges you built, the lessons you imparted, the loving children you raised?

My grandmother once told me, “No matter how bad life gets, one day you’ll be able to laugh about it.” For most things in my life that has been true, and I appreciated the words (and passed them on to my kids citing my grandmother, of course, doing my part to secure her legacy for a few more years), but for the longer picture sometimes we need more. More in the regards that unrecorded words fade quickly, and words recorded by memory only fade just slightly slower.

We must leave future generations something more substantial to remember us by, and YouTube comments and Tweets about getting coffee don’t apply. We must leave the world our thoughts, our story, and the fruits of our creativity.

The concerns my grandfather had about successive generations having less of a work ethic is certainly something to worry about when considering a nation’s legacy. My concern is the increasing volume of inane, superfluous noise that goes into and comes out of the majority of connected people. How much do the big brands brainwash with their babble? How much of Facebook is just devoid of meaning?

I am sure that some people make meaning with Facebook. I am sure that some big brands deliver a good product (I am typing this on a Mac). But that is Steve’s legacy, not mine. The world we live in has so much to offer that we need to find what works for us and shut off the rest of the noise. But that isn’t all is it? We also need to find our voice, and find complementary minds, and find an audience, and discipline ourselves to deliver, and…

You get what I mean, right. The static that advertising delivers really gets in the way of all that. I don’t think that my grandfather’s remark about work ethic is totally correct, I just think that these days we swim in such a sea of distraction that we must work hard just to get to the surface, to the clean air of our own thoughts and feelings. After all, legacy cannot be about using someone’s computer and wearing someone’s jeans, no matter how mod we look whilst doing it. Legacy is the stuff you deliver in the face of all that. The uniqueness of your vision, the clarity of your focus, the wit of your word.

I would hope that my legacy is a collection of creative works left in the able hands of children who are kind, hard-working and ready to do their part to leave the world a better place for their children. If I can’t bring myself to do that, then at least I hope for children who are kind, hard-working and ready to do their part to leave the world a better place for their children.