Feeling or Doing? #17 #cong24 #legacy
Synopsis:
Maya Angelou said people remember how you made them feel. That’s true, but is it enough? When the people who knew us die, their feelings die with them. To build a legacy requires us to create something beyond our personal relationships. Find something to leave behind for those who never knew you and will never know your name. Leave the world a better place.
Total Words
Reading Time in Minutes
3
Key Takeaways:
- How you made people feel is important. That will be be remember.
- But after the people who knew you die, then what?
- Anyone can build a wider legacy. You don’t need to be rich or powerful or a great artist. Find something, small and local, that you can build for others. Even if no one remembers your name.
- Leave the world a better place than you found it.
About Sarah Carey:
I’m a columnist and communications consultant. I advise people on strategy – for their projects, companies and themselves. I overthink a lot of stuff, but that’s my job.
Contacting Sarah Carey:
You can connect with Sarah on LinkedIn.
By Sarah Carey
Someone quoted Maya Angelou to me recently; “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
This is true but only up to a point: when the people who knew you still live. When they die, then what?
I don’t suggest that how you made people feel is not important, or an unworthy legacy. I loved and remember most fondly the ones who made me laugh and the ones who showed up. I won’t forget how people made me feel, including the ones who hurt me (especially the ones who hurt me). But when I die those feelings die with me.
If feelings are legacy, then the lifespan of a legacy is limited to living memory.
So I argue for doing. For building. For creating something that lives beyond the emotions of those we personally knew. A great legacy does something for those we never knew, never touched, never made laugh, never made cry.
Art seems like an obvious candidate. The rich can have buildings named after them, or politicians airports and legislation. But I think a vow to create a legacy beyond our personal relations can inspire anyone to try anything.
For instance, my mother made a family and is a great neighbour. In poor times she delivered babies, laid out the dead, visited the sick, cheered up the lonely and inspired others to action. She’ll be greatly missed when she goes. But when those who owe her so much are gone, she will leave more behind than their feelings of gratitude.
When the M4 motorway was being built, the construction of a new road near our village was required. But the planners failed to include any footpaths on the new road.
My mother went to the oral hearing and said there should be footpaths and a cycle path on the new road. The inspector agreed and every day I see so many people walking and cycling on those paths. They have no idea these are my mother’s legacy.
As we approached the millennium (yr 2000) she started a group to photograph, transcribe and GPS map every headstone in every graveyard in our credit union ward area. Dozens of graveyards. Thousands of headstones. All translated and recorded even as the weather eroded away the crucial data. It’s all on a website where people can trace their family information. They’ll never know her name, but she created something for others, for generations – identity.
If no one remembers her, do these lasting achievements for others count as a legacy?
I think so. A real legacy is leaving the world a better place than we found it.
Even if unidentified and uncredited, if each of us chose that as our legacy, the future wouldn’t be anything to fear.