The Matter of Legacy.
The Matter of Legacy.
As the year winds down we begin to review and access the days, actions and events that unfold to comprise yet another year gone by.
We humans busy ourselves with a multitude of everyday tasks that indeed are necessary to exist as functioning beings. We sleep, bathe, journey to the places we obtain currency for our “service to life” and interact with an assortment of emotions. We consume, create, contemplate and reason.
But it is in the quite process of contemplation, as we turn over our thoughts with the idea of time spent, that the nagging question of what “is it all about” pulls at us. The musing spirit questions our specific role in this magnificent play along with the individual significance in this overall vast experience of life. Albeit silently, this query is often posed in periods of intense personal transition. This all-encompassing question is not a new one nor has it been in past generations of mankind and it is a sure bet that it shall continue to be pondered by future generations.
As a child marvels at their reflection once they are “aware” they exist, the adult begins to question the human script. The divine acknowledgement that “I am”, “I exist” shall always initiate the additional question-why?
It is the developed mind and its strange bedfellow, the spirit or soul that asks further- what to do and how long?
What we are to do and how long we have to do it is a phenomenal expose. Both this question and insight presents itself in the two extreme periods of life- youth and older adulthood. There is nothing like impending responsibility, and on the aging side, death to inspire questions and angst!
It is here in the preponderance of contemplation that the idea of personal legacy can be examined.
Legacy is often applied to the concept of what one bequeaths to another by will. Solid and tangible items such as money, property, jewels, stocks and other incidental assets are the norm. But the far more interesting concepts are what we may leave behind by way of non-tangible “gifts”, attitudes and emotions.
Often behavior, attitude and approach are not thought of in terms of notable legacy but indeed they are. A child raised in an affluent or influential family will carry themselves in a manner different from one raised in a humble scenario.
Other collections of traits or things handed-on are stories, songs, speech patterns and body movement; often passed along culturally or ancestrally.
For the creative individual the idea of what one creates and leaves as a personal legacy and why they do so is a different process. The compelling and inspired madness to express and create is often beside oneself. It appears that the inspired souls that create a variety of artwork, books, songs and films do so not for the final end of wealth accumulation but simply the manifestation of an idea or emotion. To remove complete innocence of course it can be noted that there are those throughout history who have created works of art for mass consumption with the clear and ultimate goal of monetary gains.
The dialogue with self can thus begin. What legacy shall I leave? This current question is inspired by the need to bullet point assets should lovely fate decide to hurl a passing projectile, surge or renegade molecular out of control cell that decides it wants to take over and create havoc. Removing the ironic twist on the painful circumstances that life often imposes it is a good question indeed!
Laura C. Rodriguez
So a decision has been made. I shall leave a multitude of hugs and kisses; a legion of smiles to family, friends and strangers. A vast accumulation of short stories and scenarios that live on in the memories of everyone I speak to; a trunk load of magical stories to sooth in a harsh world. Many photographs that shall end up in the box of a street vendors of a future era that shall long for our presumed innocence, many songs that shall be discovered in dusty digital space and still ring true; a filmed message about how some of us desperately tried to warn everyone to pay attention but they just didn’t and a hidden box buried deep into the land I owned with a profound secret yet to be discovered. Yes these things cannot be devalued in a fiscal cliff crisis or carried away into oblivion. These things shall be my legacy and I shall hand over without claim for ownership and distribution.
The rest shall go to a stranger’s child.