Legacy!

This past Saturday, a friend and I spent some time in New York City.  It was a very good day!!  Among other things, we went to the Discovery Time Square Museum to see the exhibit of China’s Terracotta Warriors.  Quick background: The terracotta warriors were unearthed from the tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi, China's first emperor, who unified the country and established a seat of government.  Nearly 8,000 life size warriors, horses, and chariots were buried to protect the emperor in the afterlife.  There were also acrobats, servants, civil officials, and hundreds of other artifacts.  No two warriors are the same, and the detail in their hair and armor brings them to life.  The small, but impressive exhibit is amazing, awe inspiring, and well worth the trip! 

Of course, the purpose of such tombs is to help immortalize the emperor.  There are no known images of the first emperor however, but the survival of the terracotta figures does in a sense immortalize each of the warriors, civil officials, and others whose likenesses were captured in clay more than 2000 years ago. 

Ironically, this was also Memorial Day weekend.  Memorial Day is our official federal holiday to remember the brave men and women who died serving in our armed forces. Our collective way of immortalizing them.

Having said all that, this blog is really about our own legacies or immortality.  For many of us there won’t be any statutes erected in our honor.  Photographs will be lost and discarded over time.  Names forgotten.  Perhaps 200 years from now one of your descendants will uncover your name while tracing the family history.  Your life reduced to just a few letters on a page.

But some part of each of us will continue well after we leave this plane of existence.  What would you want yours to be?  Can you already see it in your children or grandchildren?

Will you pass on a love of music?  Art?  Education?  Are you an astute business person?  An adventurer?  Is family time at the dinner table really important to you?

You can probably point out a million things you found annoying as a child, but you’ve unknowingly incorporated them into your adult life.

(YIKES! We’re becoming our parents!......LOL!)

If you could travel forward in time, what part of you would you hope survived?  Wouldn’t it be something to see that the small business venture you started this year had grown into a multi-billion dollar business for your family?  WOW!!

Legacy.  More important than you think.