We can draw comfort from the idea of a future in which our children can draw comfort from their memories of us. Because we notice all the ways that we’ve been shaped by our beloved dead; because we feel the momentum of their love, their trauma, their insights; and because the influence of the past is so clear to us; we can’t help but wonder what will happen in the future. We can’t help but wonder what our own legacy will be for the people we leave behind.
Legacy can be a powerful desire. Like other powerful desires, it can turn toxic. The more I think about legacy, the more I notice its potential to harm.
My son died ten years ago at the age of twenty-two. He made award-winning films. He played electric bass for a band called Reign the Arcade. He traveled to New Zealand and had dinner with the famous film director Peter Jackson. I have a photograph of the two of them, standing side by side. My son’s artifacts – all the photographs and all the recordings – are far too small a legacy to give me much comfort, too small to contain everything that he means to me.
Even more, when my son died, I lost any hope of passing my own legacy onto him. I no longer get to imagine a future in which my living son draws comfort or wisdom from his memory of me. I feel this as an enormous loss.
When I think about my relationship with my son, I experience it as something that still exists in the present. Although my heart is broken, I continue to draw meaning and insight and hope from the ongoing reality of our relationship.
When I think about my living daughter, I don’t want to focus on how she will remember me after I die. I want to focus on the life we are living together today. Really loving someone requires us to be fully present in this moment. Love springs from a living connection; legacy-building springs from someplace colder.
You might remember these lines from Shelley: “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” These are inscribed on an empty pedestal, standing beside a toppled colossus, lying wrecked in an empty desert. The statue’s sculptor knew well and “stamped on these lifeless things” the “wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command” that Ozymandias wore in life. We’re left to wonder how much suffering the people endured for the sake a legacy that eventually vanished.
Those with enough power can strive to be remembered for the grandeur of their accomplishments. Let us be skeptical. Let us not excuse the suffering inflicted by the robber barons of yesterday or the tech billionaires of today. The harm they’ve done is not erased by endowing a faculty position at a prestigious university nor by launching a roadster into space. “Legacy” has become a way for universities to perpetuate the privilege of alumni and donors.
Legacy has become a way to colonize the future with concerns of today. Like a branch of necromancy, the creation of a legacy can be a way to exert control from beyond the grave.
As Quakers, we should take a different path. Our ancestors left unmarked stones above their dead. We believe in continuing revelation. We believe that Truth is alive and unfolding. It is not a static thing to be preserved and bequeathed.
Instead of building a legacy for the future, I think we are closer to the heart of what matters if we’re building more capacity for love in the present. If we can increase the love among us now, then the momentum of that love will carry us toward a better future. We can’t create the legacy the future needs most if our eyes are on the future and not on the work of today. ~~~
Mike Huber is director of program at Quaker Voluntary Service and a member of West Hills Friends Church in Portland, Oregon.