Legacy

Footprints on a beach.

I’ve recently been thinking about legacy.

Not in the egotistical sense of what will we be known for when we are no longer here, but in the sense of how we want to leave an imprint on people.

I was walking on the beach looking at footprints. Footprints that would be washed away in no time. I thought about a recent conversation with a relative who told me about my great-grandparents. As I was listening, I thought to myself that I had absolutely no connection to my great-grandparents other than being blood related. I never met them, never met one of my grandparents either. And how do you find enough space in your heart for people who are known to you by name only?

They lived so long ago that I don’t have pictures of them. I don’t know what their voices sounded like, what made them laugh, what they were afraid of, or what they loved. I don’t know what kind of parents they were. I don’t know what kind of friends they were. I know their names, a few fragments of their stories, and that somehow, through an impossibly long chain of lives and choices, they became part of mine.

And yet, they are strangers.

It made me wonder what it really means to leave a legacy.

We tend to think of legacy as something grand. A body of work. A business. A name that lives on. Something tangible enough to point to and say, I was here.

But maybe legacy is much quieter than that.

Maybe it isn’t about whether someone remembers your name a hundred years from now. Maybe it’s about what remains in the people you touched, even if they don’t know where it came from.

A kindness you showed someone when they needed it. A lesson you taught without realizing it was a lesson. The way you made someone feel safe. The confidence you gave someone when they didn’t have much of their own. A story you told that someone carries with them.

Perhaps the things we leave behind aren’t always attached to us.

Maybe my great-grandparents left pieces of themselves in my grandparents, who left pieces of themselves in my parents, who left pieces of themselves in me. And perhaps some of what I carry that I think belongs entirely to me was once someone else’s.

That thought makes the distance between us feel a little different.

Standing on that beach, I kept looking at the footprints. Each one was temporary. The ocean would erase them, one after another, as if they had never been there. But for a moment, they changed the shape of the sand.

Maybe that is all any of us can really do.

We walk through one another’s lives for a little while. We leave impressions. Some are deep, some barely visible. Some disappear almost immediately. Others are carried forward by people we may never meet, into lives we will never know.

We may never know the full extent of what we leave behind. And maybe we aren't supposed to. Maybe a meaningful legacy isn't being remembered forever. Maybe it's being felt long after we've gone.