A Legacy of Life and Death

You may be reading these words long after I’ve written them. And, in part, that’s the point—building and creating things that last motivates.

And legacy motivates our heroes, too: Lebron James and Tom Brady pursue more championships, and it causes those who haven’t won to seek a ring desperately. It’s the GOAT debate between Lebron and Jordan. It’s how we carry ourselves to live up to our parents and what we seek from our children.

Legacy is a motivating factor behind critical things we do and value. We want our impact to exist beyond our lifetime.

What’s in a name? Shakespeare’s characters answered his question by feuding over theirs, and we’re not too different. It’s a driver for men wanting male children to pass down the family name, a way to extend family and legacies. Then there are Jr.’s, II’s, and III’s – our name living on even if we don’t.

More, people build businesses to pass them on to another generation or survive forever. Why is Mark Zuckerberg working on Facebook/Meta long after he needs to work? It’s his baby – his impact on the world that outlives and outshines him.

And this isn’t a new phenomenon. People of our past built cathedrals, monuments, and wonders to show who they were long after their deaths. For example, the pyramids, some of the most influential and iconic structures ever built, are tombs for Egyptian rulers. As early as 2,000 BCE, these folks wanted everyone to know how majestic they were. So they constructed massive projects to their legacy.

A few months ago, I sat with a group of storytellers talking about our challenges and dreams. One of the folks was wondering if anyone would appreciate their work and how they may never know the magnitude of the impact. And it’s true. And it’s a lot of luck that determines what becomes appreciated. For example, Socrates’s work is only known because someone wrote it down and stored it in a place where it survived, and someone later found it.

But I wonder if Socrates worked for his legacy.

What if we didn’t care about legacy at all? Say people forget or destroy your work upon death – would you still do it? Your name and accomplishments wiped from existence upon your death.

Part of the reason I write is that it allows me to communicate across time. If all these blogs went with me, I’d have to rethink what that meant for how I wanted to share my ideas.

But I’d keep sharing. I share because it helps me and benefits others. If I was doing this so people 100 years from now read and know me, that is a complex outcome to create. It’s hard enough to get an audience in the present, so why focus on a future audience?

Coming back to Socrates, he lectured and taught people around him. But he delivered these lessons orally. How could he expect future generations to know who he was? And is what we attribute to him even his? It’s a student’s recollection of his ideas, later found and translated to modernity. Would Socrates agree with what we’ve attributed to him? Yet his impact on his students and the courage to live and die for his principles had lasting effects.

All this is to say that if we didn’t care about our legacy, we’d focus more on doing what’s important now. And while I’m a proponent of long-term thinking instead of short-term, there’s a sweet spot here. That’s where you can still think long-term but not be concerned with leaving a legacy.

My friend and I were in Prague, the city of a hundred spirals. We climbed across the river to a park overlooking the beautiful expanse. As we sat swapping ideas, we talked about how one person gets the credit for the work of so many. For example, we credit The Pyramid of Giza to Pharoah Kofu, but thousands and thousands of folks built the pyramids. And it’s quite probable that many others contributed to it more than the person recognized for it.

So why are we aiming for legacy at all? It’s inconsistent and unpredictable.

We care about legacy because we’re trying to backdoor our way to immortality. My body won’t live forever, but maybe what I do or my name can.

David Eagleman, a neurosurgeon, author, and Stanford teacher, 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.” It’s that third death – posterity forgetting us – we’re fighting with legacy.

But what if you accomplished the most amazing thing? Say you constructed an incredible wonder, solved human organization and government, or made humans multi-galactic. Is it important you did it, that people give you credit for it, or that it gave your life worth? Too often, we use legacy as a way to say who we are. We define ourselves by our deeds and accomplishments instead of facing we don’t know who we are or that we’re discovering new parts of ourselves.

So I’m working on what I enjoy and what intrigues me. Not because it puts my name in a history book or on the lips of future generations but because it’s how I want to use my life.

One of these days, we’ll learn to live instead of avoiding death.