What will be your legacy?

As I attempt to spring clean, even though we are well into summer, I’m attempting to ‘clear the clutter’ in my home. While I do this, it has come to my attention that we all – especially as we get older, time just has a way of making us collect and gather stuff. Clearing our clutter is just another thing to tend to.

But, as I work on this chore, I got to thinking about legacy and what would happen to all my ‘clutter’ once I was gone. Yes, some of the stuff will be willed to beneficiaries but what about the stuff of unnecessary needlessness; the stuff nobody else would need, want or like.

As we get older, this is something we think about. Maybe not the most uplifting topic but definitely a valuable thought provoking and life changing one. A necessary topic as I continue to clear clutter. I’m reminded that after endless hours and truck loads of disposing of childhood possessions, furniture, dishes and gads of paraphernalia belonging to parents and grandparents and great grandparents after they have departed this life, I realize that my legacy will contain such clutter as well. When you clear someone else’s clutter, the issue of your own legacy can’t help but pop into your mind.

These are someone else’s choices and this is just stuff; material things are not feelings or memories. Memories and feelings are the stuff that make up legacy when someone close to you passes.  The word legacy makes you want to think that we leave behind material possessions that after a while are forgotten, lost, broke, sold etc., but actually if we think about our legacy being the non material treasures we bestow on someone, our legacy will never die.

Thinking about what your legacy will look like now is a great motivator in living your life with gratefulness, making it easier to make choices, helping you to decide what is important and what isn’t, and helping you in decision making now.

When someone close to you passes or when many people in your life pass away, it makes you think of your own mortality and what you will be leaving behind. And it doesn’t mean just stuff – though stuff is part of it.

Your legacy is what will be remembered – what will be carried on and what will be left behind. It could be dishes, furniture, clothes, jewellery or money or property. But it could also be strength, education, humour, knowledge, a feeling that was delivered, character or personality. It could be any number of stories (good or bad) or visions or visuals, videos, positiveness vibes or vibrations, inspiration, etc. The more I think about it, the more I think I would like my legacy to be more about how I want someone to feel and be inspired to live their life or aspire to solve a problem based on something I did or said, then what material possession I left them. I think that lives with you forever; whereas clothing does not.

Your legacy is something you want to carry on and on and on. How you made someone feel is a legacy giant in terms of possessions. What does your legacy look like?