When you die, how will everyone remember you? It’s a question no one will ever get the answer to. But that doesn’t mean it’s something we should never think about. After all, once a person is dead, the only thing anyone has to remember them by is memories. Stories. Clips of someone else’s life that they got to be a part of. That’s all we leave behind, stories. All we leave behind is a legacy.
Plenty of people have left their legacies on this earth. People from the founding of America, the first king of England, the Romans, the Greeks, the Mesopotamians. There’s likely to be at least one person from each of those groups that anyone could name. Even hundreds, thousands of years after they’re dead and gone, people still know their names and still tell stories of them. They left their marks on history, leaving a slash in the timeline that says, “I was here.”
Today, it seems like it’s been a while since someone made one of those slashes. There are celebrities and presidents and other world leaders, but they fade in and out of relevancy, controversy, drama, and a hundred other things that don’t matter, so even when someone is a worldwide name, eventually they’re not. Something happens, or maybe nothing happens for too long. They slip from the public eye, and people stop telling stories about them, idolizing them, stop caring. Their name gets forgotten. They didn’t leave their mark on history. And it’s not like every single person on Earth can, but out of 8 billion people, one would think someone would be able to step up and tell the entire future of humanity, “I was here. I existed.” But no one has.
It’s not a massive deal, it’s not like anyone needs to. But it’s odd that no one seems to even want to. Everyone strives for fame, for fortune, and for the whole world to know their name- but not history. People live their lives in pursuit of a goal that- once achieved- is only temporary. The world may know your name, but they don’t know you. What celebrities leave behind isn’t a legacy; it’s a cheap imitation of a human that used to exist. They leave behind a shadow, a name, they leave behind nothing.
A man by the name of David Eagleman, author and neuroscientist, once said, “There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.” There are people out there who aren’t fully dead yet because people still talk about them to this day. In a hundred years, their names will probably continue to be spoken. In our current world, whose name is still going to be spoken in two hundred years? Who is history going to remember? Elon Musk? Jeff Bezos? Some other rich egomaniac who bought their way into the spotlight and will buy their way into the history books, too? Who in our current world is going to change everything? Write something revolutionary, make something revolutionary, do something revolutionary? Who is actually going to take a flag, stick it in the timeline, and announce to everyone who does and ever will exist that they were here and did something?
Consequences are a real thing! They exist, and they exist beyond what immediately happens. Every single action one makes, even the slightest movement, sends a ripple through the universe, and some actions will make smaller ripples than others, but they are still ripples. There are still consequences. And the cool thing about ripples? They keep going. Even after the immediate wave, there’s more. And more. The consequences of one’s actions will outlive them by far. I mean, if one is religious, then, in theory, we are still- to this day- living out the consequences of Adam and Eve’s misdoings! And that was at the literal dawn of time itself! The legacy one leaves behind is a direct result of their actions. So when you leave those ripples, make them big. Make them waves, make them a tsunami. Set the ball rolling and make sure it never stops.
You can live a good life without leaving a mark on history. But no matter who you are or how popular you are, you leave behind a legacy. Your decisions will be remembered after you’re dead. You can’t control who tells your story, but you can control the stories they tell. Leave behind something worth telling. Leave behind something to be proud of. Leave behind a legacy.
