People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.

The habit of caring about people you will never meet works in both directions or not at all. Someone with no sense of what was handed to them rarely feels much obligation to hand anything on, because both require seeing yourself as one link rather than as the point of the chain. Gratitude backwards and responsibility forwards are the same muscle. Neglect one and the other weakens.

Find out something concrete about the generation before yours: what they built, what it cost them, what you inherited without asking. Then choose one thing you are doing for whoever comes after. Planting for shade you will not sit in is settling work.