The best things you do may help people you’ll never meet. That’s not a loss. That’s the whole point of legacy.
STILLNESS
WHAT THIS MEANS
Useful work tends to travel beyond your line of sight. Something you build, write or teach gets handed on, and most of the people it reaches will have no idea you were involved. Not seeing the effect does not shrink it, though it does mean working without the feedback.
Do one thing this week with no way of finding out whether it landed. Giving up the receipt is the price of doing something that keeps going.
A QUESTION TO SIT WITH
Who could your work help long after you forget it?
MORE IN TIME, MORTALITY & LEGACY
- Waiting tables, you notice the families who put their phones away. They’re the ones still talking when the check comes.
- The cousin you only see at holidays is part of a short list of people who knew you at six and at sixty. Keep them.
- Ask your grandpa what his first job paid. Then ask what he learned there. The second answer ages better.
Free, with nothing to buy inside it.