What are your thoughts about legacy?
It’s terrifying to be asked what your legacy will be. Do you freeze like a deer in the headlights? Or do you take flight? Or do you shrug it off, feigning contemptuous indifference, saying it doesn’t really matter, even though deep down you know it does?
For me, it’s important for my life to have had meaning and purpose. I don’t know about you but I want to leave the world a better place for having lived here.
In a previous post, I mentioned navigating the maze of worthy causes and trying to figure out where to invest my precious resources of time and energy. I decided to get involved with being a digital champion for a national charity.
After being interviewed the other day, I’m even more certain this is a place I want to invest my time and energy. Why?
- My dad and other elderly people are being increasingly left behind by the digital divide. I want to help them connect to family and friends online and to be able to fill in complex health forms online so they can get medical treatment more quickly
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The charity project lead carefully interviewed me to see where my talents, experiences and interests lie. They were more interested in seeing if there was a fit than they were in recruiting me just for the sake of it even if I may not have been a good fit. They cared more about alignment than seeing me just as an expendable dogsbody or a depletable human resource.
- My values were in alignment with the values of the organization.
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I felt my contribution, no matter how big or small, mattered and would really make a difference in my local community, and ultimately in the world at large in terms of helping to close the digital divide.
It’s a small start, but there is commitment, intent and focus.
Intent and focus are the crucial bits! I feel so happy and at peace now that I finally narrowed my focus and have a strong intention to work from. I don’t know how it will grow. It may not be a big legacy, or my final one, but it’s where I want to invest right now.
Is there something niggling at you that you want to do in your community, a gap you might be able to fill? Think about what your immediate intention and focus could be and commit to pursuing it.