Personal Discovery: Legacy After Death Part 1

What kind of legacy do you want to leave behind after you die? It is thoughts like these that lead us to live our lives in the way we’d like to be remembered, giving us a final destination on our roadmap to our goals and boundaries to our actions.

Ender Wiggin, in the novel Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, became a Speaker for the Dead. A Speaker for the Dead would be someone who went to another’s funeral and would tell that person’s life-story as a eulogy, the truths of that person’s life both the good and the bad. What legacy do you want to leave behind? How do you want people to remember your life as after you are no longer in this world to tell them? What truths would other people say about your life-story?

Activity:

Choose four people: a family member, a close friend, a coworker or someone who works along you, and a neighbor. If you were to die today, and they were the only ones chosen to speak at your funeral, what would each one truthfully say in their eulogy of how they knew you and the person that you were? Now, what would you wish they would say in their eulogy? Is there a difference? If there is, then what can we do to bring it more in line? What do we need to do differently that we’re not doing in the present?

Though we don’t need to plan out every step we take in our lives, we need to know what direction to be walking in. The talents we have are nothing to be proud of because they are a natural part of us to be used or unused. It is what we do with that talent that is important and what we accomplish that determines our greatness. That is what we can be proud of and what we will be remembered for. Or else if we just see the goal, but we stand unmoving or we move in the wrong direction, no matter how much we want to reach our destination, we will find it difficult to get there.

“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.” – Steve Prefontaine

By knowing what we want to be remembered for and to work towards that goal, we can also learn to make choices to prevent things we don’t want to be remembered for. Wrong choices can overshadow a lifetime of good choices. When we know what we want our legacy to be, we can steer away from things and actions that would impinge on that.

But what if it’s too late? What if we already overshadowed by things that aren’t really how we want to be remembered or known for? Then, it is even more important to know what you would like your legacy to be because you will have to work harder to gain it. It’s not impossible though. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Everyone will. Learn from them and keep moving forwards. Have your eyes fixed on that goal and no matter your missteps or the strange maneuverings of life, your actions and perseverance will inevitable take you nearer and nearer to where you want to be.

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” – George Eliot

When Alfred Nobel’s brother died in 1888, several newspapers mistakenly thought that it was Alfred Nobel, himself, who had died. They published premature eulogies of him that denounced his work, the invention of dynamite, calling him the “merchant of death” saying he “became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before”. Shaken by these words, he decided to change his life and focus on the people who were changing the world for the better. He set up the annual Nobel awards, recognizing and honoring those that make a large contribution to the world. One of them was the Nobel peace prize.