Tell Us about Legacy

 I don't think about legacy. I don't think much about the past either. I'm not fascinated by family trees. I am in the here and now. I also believe the people that you help don't owe you anything. It's not a reciprocal gesture, it's a pay it forward thing. You help when you have capacity to do so. So on legacy, I'm not that interested, I'm more about what can I do now. I don't need to be remembered but if I make someone else's day a little better, then it's a good day for me too.

 'Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth'. Muhammad Ali

This is not just about giving money or helping out - every decision we make especially when we vote is causing a myriad of impacts on the world. You don't get to say you're a good Christian but vote to cut welfare. You don't get to say you're charitable but vote to persecute a minority and so on. You don't vote for tax cuts without that money coming from some portfolio. And those decisions, for most of us are a greater legacy impacting the future generations than any of our own small actions and usually one that we aren't so proud of any more. Legacy is not just what we chose it to be, it is everything we do.

When I was in Singapore, I went to an exhibition called Change Drivers. One of the quotes that resonated with me was "We are the generation that will be know for the destruction of nature."  and the woman activist ranger talking about the 90% deforestation in Nigeria remarked on sustainability: "everything we do today will directly effect the people you love in your life." (It's at Art Science Museum if you are interested in seeing it, a collection of little films). I have been thinking about that a lot. Our legacy is actually the unintended damage we do to the planet.

“We don't inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”  David Brower

One thing to note with legacy, and it was pointed out in They are all my children when he names Colonel Wahle as person who barely gets a mention in the history books but was the first decisive voice who actually understood what was going on. So legacy is rewritten to suit the audience. And like Ozymandias in the Shelley poem, perhaps there are better things to focus our attention and energy on.

I have mentioned many times the story of Aki Ra and the huge impact it had on me. So his legacy reaches much further than the demining in Cambodia. I still think of Sheik Umar Khan the doctor who worked with the ebola patients until he got the disease himself, isolating himself with the ill until he died. I learn from and admire the people who choose to do things I'm not sure I would. The people who inspire me to do more or be less selfless are the ones with the legacy that outlast them in my mind. It is the footnotes in history that often really are important, the ones that touch lives every day that matter.

So for me, it is the present that matters, but we need to be mindful that our actions now ripple way beyond our immediate circle, time and place.

There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew. Marshall McLuhan

This song makes me think of legacy. It was the end of a Graham Bond show I watched as a teen. It really stuck with me. I don't think this is the version but it was the only one I could find. 

Linking with #MondayMusicMovesMe just for the songs. #PictorialTuesday #SundayBest & #Inspirememonday (just for the pics) #TellUsAbout  #ThruMyLens

Another song that sums up our responsibility to the legacy of our actions (or lack of). Ask yourself, will there be weeds or wildflowers when you're done?