LC Exercise #2 Part 1: My "Legacy"

Everyone wants to be remembered for generations to come as someone historically significant like George Washington or Mother Teresa or the Beatles!- but most people go completely forgotten. The sad truth is that it’s not realistic for anyone to think that their life will have any meaning to anyone in the future. No one really has much of a legacy. I would hope though, that my friends and family would remember me as something special. And I also hope that I have made, and will continue to make, a difference in other people’s lives, however small and unnoticed that difference may be.

So far I feel like I haven’t accomplished a whole lot; I haven’t made any important choices, and I haven’t done anything all that extraordinary. In the future though, I want to be known as someone who has really lived. I want to experience a million different things- try skydiving, ride on an elephant, drive coast to coast across America, etc.! And I want to travel literally everywhere and maybe eventually work for an international aid organization. And although I have done more in my short sixteen years of life than most, there’s still so much more to come. It all still seems so far in the future, so I really don’t think my legacy has been created yet.

I’d hope that people wouldn’t just remember me as a good person, but as someone a little more out of the ordinary. As for my personal strengths, I think the people who really know me would maybe say creative, able to speak my mind, and extremely dedicated to whatever I decide to do. Standing up for what is wrong is really important to me. I’m a pretty flexible and adaptable person, but I’m always questioning things, and there’s always a point when I know it’s time to take action or speak up. Not compromising your identity to please others is another belief I stand for. I may be a little weird and shy and awkward, but who cares? I really hope the ones who don’t care about that, but care about me, remember me for all those things.

Once again though, I don’t really see any of that as worthy of being called a “legacy”- I feel like to have a legacy, you’d have to be much more outstanding than that and as out of the ordinary as I’d like to be, I know I’m still pretty ordinary. Maybe I’m just uncomfortable with the actual word “legacy” because it seems so big and important- I think a better term would just be “how you want/are going to be remembered”. For that, I would probably have to respond with slightly unusual- in both the good and bad senses of the word- exploratory, and passionate about life, whereas for “legacy”, I would probably say nothing!

In the future I want to be happy- not very original, I know. I want to be content with who I am and what I’ve done, but never satisfied, so I can continue to strive for more (in a good way, of course!). It’s not about success, but it’s about constantly setting (reachable) goals. I just want to continue to be adventure thirsty. I want to be wise, and influential! And, even if only miniscule, able to create positive change. Is being happy a legacy though? Of that I’m not so sure. But I guess if you’re truly happy, your legacy wouldn’t really matter all that much to you anyways.