Surprisingly, this is one of those things that, if you Google it or attempt to find different ways people have thought about this question — which is perhaps the deepest question of one’s life, and/or why you cry at the end of the movie Big Fish even though you resent Billy Crudup for leaving Marie-Louise Parker while she was pregnant — mostly results-wise you get legal documents and shitty Forbes articles from 2018. I don’t dabble in either of those, although I have written shitty Forbes articles that appear under the names of other people, so hey, maybe I have.
I figure if you asked most people, first-world or not, their “legacy” elements would include some mix of:
- Kids
- Money
- Professional success
- Faith
- Relationships
- How much they left to future generations
- Whether they are associated with something unique or specific
Those seem like the big buckets, with “kids” — physically producing another human — and money — a major mark of success and virtue for people — being far and away 1 and 2 on the list. I think “money” and “professional success” are often cousins, although not always; pastors can achieve great professional success, as can people who regularly go to Rwanda to do aid work, and…
