How do we ensure that we leave a legacy that will ‘sparkle with generosity, kindness and joy?’
By Annie Katz
When I was a young woman, I wanted to be rich and famous and drive a fancy sports car, but as I matured I abandoned those early ambitions. “Without a trace” often refers to hiking through pristine areas while leaving no signs of your having been there. Now I want to leave this life without a trace left behind. But like my earlier desires, this one is delusional.
Even though I’ve lived modestly, with no children, I’ve lived in lots of places, known lots of people and worked at lots of jobs. I like to think I’m insignificant, but is that true?
Many years ago, a woman come up to me and said she still treasured a baby quilt I made for their firstborn, a quilt I didn’t remember making until she filled me in on all the details of the time and place; then I remembered, vaguely.
Sometimes I’m embarrassed by such lapses in memory, such as the time I reconnected with old friends after 20 years, and the wife said she still uses the little gift bag I made for the gift I brought to their wedding. I didn’t remember attending their wedding until they filled in all the blanks for me, and then I was mortified to have blocked or forgotten something that was so important to them.
How is it possible to forget things so entirely? It’s as if my mental closets get cleaned out each time I move, and I’ve moved around a lot in my life. When I move from one town to another, I do a thorough purge of all the physical things that I don’t need to take into the next chapter of my life, so maybe I do the same thing with all the names, faces, and events that I no longer need to keep fresh in my memory. Those facts either get deleted or I put them in such deep storage that it is hard to dredge up the memory of that time long ago.
My parents struggled financially when I was a kid. Once they moved our whole family — two parents, four children, and one large dog — from Southern California to Eastern Washington with nothing but a little homemade trailer full of possessions that they hitched behind the family station wagon.
Before the move, my mother came into our room with four small cardboard boxes. She handed us each an empty box with our name on it. She told us we could take whatever would fit into our box and nothing more. I remember my little sister cried because her box wouldn’t hold all her dolls.
I had just finished fifth grade and felt very grown up, so it was easy for me to leave my childhood treasures behind when I moved on to my new life. Having that firm limit of one small box helped me establish priorities in a hurry, and I had no regrets about the things I left behind. Maybe that experience set me on a path of traveling light.
All the things that I have left behind throughout my long life still exist someplace, maybe in someone else’s home or rented storage unit. All those things were mine to care for, and now they belong to someone else or they’re in rubbish heaps.
In the same way, my past actions and words and thoughts are still out there in the world, still part of someone else’s experience, even if I’ve forgotten them or blocked them from my own memory.
What an enormous responsibility it is to live a human life! I’ve behaved badly at times, thinking, feeling, saying, or doing things that have hurt or upset others rather than bringing them peace and happiness. How do I behave from here on out to cause no harm? How do I live from a clean place of inner peace so that I naturally radiate light out into the world, like a lamp in the darkness?
Day by day, knowing that my behaviors ripple out into the world in ways I can’t predict, I can do my best to make the traces I leave behind sparkle with generosity, kindness and joy.
Annie Katz is a retired educator living in Ashland. She has studied philosophy and spiritual practices all her life and now writes novels for fun. Readers may contact Annie at [email protected].
Want to contribute? Send 600- to 700-word articles on all aspects of inner peace to Richard Carey ([email protected]).
