Frankly Put: To The Legacies We Wish To Leave Behind
“What is a legacy? It’s planting seeds in a garden, you’ll never get to see” ~ LMM (Hamilton, An American Musical)
A piece of you keeps living in everyone you leave here. The priest kept on repeating this during a memorial. This notion that even though he had never met the departed, he has met them through those who live on by the departed’s love. This long-lasting impact that we leave on others is how we live on. We pass on these pieces of ourselves to the next person like parasites almost.
At least, that is what is implanted by the sentiment. It makes me think of the movie Coco, which explores the idea of the afterlife and the oblivion beyond it. To believe you die in so many ways is such a morbid thought to have but still. In this case, you die in the land of the living and once the last person that ever held the idea of you forgets, you die once again in a final death.
Oblivion is this feared concept. The idea that at some point in the thread of history we cease to exist is a humbling thought. So help me, those who move the world and those who did nothing suffer the same dull fate. In typical human nature, we rush to hold on to the possibility of living on after that fateful day through these legacies we leave behind.
Our hopes and aspirations, ambitions and achievements, beliefs and philosophies are just but a few of the legacies we hold so close to our chest, some may say, in preparation for death. However, how do you prepare for the understandably inevitable unexpected? The “one day you’re here, the next you’re gone.”
For some period in my life, the idea of generational wealth haunted my very existence with its mentions not too many mouths away from mine at any one given time. This idea is that I will kill myself now so that those that come after me in my bloodline enjoy my very cause of death. What drives you to so selfishly selflessly dip yourself into lives that would probably not hold your existence in such high esteem? Legacy.
The ambition to turn a name into a brand. That’s another one. The push to form so powerful a force that is infused into a name that the very association of someone to it is defining of their character. It is almost like when they share your name, they wear all your positive influence and become a vessel of you and your efforts. Coming from a culture of sharing names, this one is the one that happens a lot in my periphery.
I am not going to lie and say that the thought of this doesn’t bring a smile to my face. The joys of vicariously living through another soul. At the same time, I am cautious about it. Not too far out is the opposite. The threat that you could mess up so badly that it is labelled your legacy and you live nothing good in your wake as you leave this earth. According to societal expectations, this is supposed to be a shaking thought.
This in that way is a love letter to the legacies we hold close to our chests. The dreams that only those who are awake after we are in final sleep get to relive. This protected drive at the back of our minds that keeps us going even on days it doesn’t feel like anything is moving. A reason to wake up that’s greater than self.
Perhaps, it is safe to say that it is kind of terrifying to think that our good intentions could be clouded by grief. See, this is the weird thing about grief. It teaches us to be grateful for life but in this convoluted way of making us hate every waking moment of it. This gaping hole in life that we learn to fill with things that make this mosaic in the place of all the good things that left with the departed.
While our good wishes may so be that our legacies are a light in the darkness, light comes not without shadow. They often say that funerals are for the living and truth to that so are the legacies. Once you are gone, they are worth as much to you as whatever is under the ground. Things that once meant something that now cannot find a place in the dictionary of life.
That being said, this was not supposed to be this dark and negative draw on the whole thing. Legacies are beautiful too. Relationships are legacies, you know? You may leave on this earth the opportunity for the interaction between people that “saves” them. Your funeral could be the birth of their friendship.
Principled people are legacies. There is this peculiar influence the dead have on the living that I am yet to fully dissect but really I keep seeing it. How at the news of passing, people begin to emulate the things that the dead did, whether unconsciously or consciously. I don’t know when it started but I get irked by the sudden realization of life not being forever that comes after hearing news of death.
It isn’t per se the waking up to reality but rather the cyclic nature of it. Oh how quickly the world seems to forget the regret it has when you leave this world and goes back to regularly scheduled programming until the next inevitable death happens again. Can’t we just skip the charade of it all? Carry within us this readiness for it and not feign this unfounded regret… you know what, I’ll not open that box right now. Momento mori, is all I will say.
In legacies, we romanticize our deaths but what happens when the flowers on graves die? We pack ourselves into the pieces in the legacies we wish to leave behind… maybe they’ll carry them on, to put it Frankly.
