cultivate your legacy
Inspired by The Old Man and the Screen's On legacy and what’s left.
Why leave a legacy only for those who haven't arrived yet? You can cultivate one for them, yourself, and those around you now. Your children, family, friends, and everyone else can join you in enjoying the transmission of your past into the present and possibly the future. Better yet, that exchange can adopt a life of its own, percolating well beyond your imagination.
Young, healthy people tending to their legacies thanks to abundant creative outlets and free time seems fantastic. They share and preserve healthy expressions of their personality for existing and future generations to intersect with. In addition, the practice bolsters their own fallible memory, defending against growing old and becoming unhealthy. You don't have to preserve everything, but there's so much that can be preserved at low cost to great effect. Start there.
Giving people the chance to read your writing, watch footage of you, or cherish your keepsakes at any amount seems both fair and reasonable. They don't have to. Many of them won't. But if even one person benefits from an artifact of yours, isn't having made and preserved it worthwhile? Such items can still benefit them decoupled from their original meaning or function too.
While your records can spoil memories of you, be careful about underestimating how much they can sweeten memories and even restore good ones. The same goes for how much can be learned from expressing negativity and how you overcame it toward positivity.
Balance making memories with loved ones and saving memories with your preserved legacy. Be your best, most present self in people's lives to be remembered for how you were at that time. Preserve that and other snapshots of your life as novel frames for yourself, loved ones, and others to cherish, learn from, and keep your flame alive.
Be as memorable as you wish. Like how abundant legacies and interest in them have blessed history as a whole, may your own legacy follow suit. Pile it up in private whether future generations treasure it or the garbage man picks it up on his shift while you're still alive. Pile it up in public whether it's met with rowdy applause or deaf ears. Less thinking about your legacy as mere possessions to hand down. More thinking about circulating it as an enduring project that countless people can join and enrich.