Leave Your Story As Your Legacy

Dear Amitji,

“And as one approaches the finishing line of this great marathon that each one of us run, we begin to wonder, not for ourselves - we have limitations of time - but for them that we shall leave behind, our progeny and the generation that they shall awaken ! We shall have less spent time .. they shall have more, as must they should .. and this then be the worry of our worries .. “ (DAY - 3093)

Sir, as always, your posts are very purposeful and educative for all, but I must acknowledge that at my advancing age it is also very relevant to me in my life. We all desire significance –- to lead happy and fulfilled lives surrounded by family and friends. And for many of us, there is a compelling need to make a difference – to leave a lasting impact on the people most dear to us and the world in which we live.  The search for significance and desire to plan for the future leads many to ponder their legacy. What kind of legacy will you leave?

Our ancestors left us a legacy of faith that provided places to worship that we love today. Their simple yet saintly life left a permanent mark on their progeny which we call our ‘Sanskars’.   Our parents left us with memories of the most enjoyable moments of their life we spent with them which we cherish for as long as we live. We all want to be remembered, to feel that we’ve contributed something to the world. For some, like you, sir, this can be a driving force leading to great accomplishments and extraordinary contributions to mankind. Your legacy is putting your stamp on the future. It’s a way to make some meaning of your existence: “Yes, world of the future, I was here. Here’s my contribution, here’s why I hope my life mattered.” But for most of us with more modest goals, what pushes us is the desire to leave a legacy. Most of what we leave our children and grandchildren are memories – of who we are and what mattered to us. We provide this legacy by being with our loved ones and through our relationships. But we can do more than just serve as a good role model. Learning from your life, we can take a more active approach to leaving a legacy. Following your footsteps, as you do by writing in your Blog, DAY after DAY, one way would be to add our personal story to our genealogy record by including anecdotes and feelings from our relationships with our parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, siblings and children. Doing this will enrich the bare facts and timeline, providing color so our heirs and survivors can know what it really felt like to live during our years. That’s a legacy no one else can provide.

Sir, we are ever so grateful to you for giving us DAY to DAY lessons on life through your most meaningful posts that provide interesting anecdotes from your life. The most important lesson we have learnt from reading your writings is that  our story is who we are. All that will remain of us after we are gone is our story. Stories connect us to our roots. Our stories contain our common spiritual heritage. They are also our legacy for future generations. All we are is the story we leave behind.

Leaving the spiritual legacy we want to is about being able to get past the conflict in our lives; it is realizing and living into the resolution of our lives, and being able to pass on our understanding of that entire experience to our children.

Too often legacy is thought of as something tangible, something material, that we have worked hard to achieve and that we leave in a will or as a material product of, or testament to, our lives. But it can be much more than this. A legacy is, first and foremost, "that desire so profound" to leave something behind when we die. What becomes more and more important as we age is the desire to be known — known for who we really were during our brief stay here. What might be one of the saddest things is to leave this earth without those you love the most ever really knowing who you were.

At the heart of everyone's sacred story is how we have shown, felt, received, and given love in our lives. It is about the compassion, the kindness, the courage, and the beauty that has come into our lives and that has flowed from us but yet remained within us, despite, and because of, all the difficulties and challenges we have endured. It is the story of our soul. This is the story that is a spiritual and eternal gift to others. Leaving our life story as our spiritual legacy is like talking to the next generations. It is a way of honoring the generations before us and of showing respect for the generations to come after us.

Record our triumphs over adversity, our recovery after a fall, our progress when all seemed black, our rejoicing when we had finally achieved. Share our thoughts and feelings; give our descendants a glimpse into the real we.

Sir, we all feel so fortunate and blessed to be on the Blog as your Ef, as the ongoing lessons we learn from your life we could never have learnt even attending the highest of the learning institutions anywhere in the world

“We should so live and labor in our time that what came to us as seed may go to the next generation as blossom, and what came to us as blossom may go to them as fruit.”  – Henry Ward Beecher

With regards

Tilak Rishi