What is Legacy

The 32nd President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.” We can work endlessly to provide the perfect world for our children, or we can give them the tools to build that future themselves. It is impossible to give our youth the world we want, but it would be an injustice not to prepare them for what the world will be and already is today. So, in saying that, what are we doing to prepare them for the ride that we call life?

If you are reading this as an adult, I want you to look back to your adolescence and ask yourself whether or not you were given the necessary skills to survive and compete on a global stage. If you are an adolescent reading this, then I want you to consider what you know today and ask yourself whether or not you’re prepared to face the world that we live in today. Do you have the knowledge, skills and mindset to not only survive, but make the world a better place? What have you been given or done personally to become an important member of society? What will your legacy be?

When I turned 18, I was more lost in life than I had ever been in my entire adolescence. It was as if I finally realized just how much my choices would effect the future of my entire life. I had so many hopeless dreams fed by my wild imagination that I couldn't decide which path to commit myself too. I kept asking myself "what if I choose the wrong one?" I sat for what seemed endless hours asking myself what I possibly had to offer this ever-changing society and I always came up empty. The truth is we can spend an infinite amount of time asking and planning how to initiate change, or we can just do it. Every second you waste thinking and not acting, is a second longer that your dream is not being achieved. Anyone can dream big dreams but not everyone is willing to risk their comfort and security to achieve those dreams. Ambition without action is fruitless fantasy, just as knowledge without sharing is as ignorant as knowing nothing in the first place.

Young minds have a natural curiosity but education today does not encourage that beautiful ability. Society demands conformity, teaching youth the art of agreeability, not individuality. Yet, in our efforts to conform for the acceptance of others, we only end up hating ourselves because there is no such thing as the “perfect human” or “normal.” The greatest minds of our history are those that dared to stand alone and question the generally accepted ideologies of our society. The people remember today are the ones that created a legacy.

When you simplify it, life is just one massive Choose Your Own Path storybook where we have to make hundreds of decisions everyday. My fear has always been that my death would be the final page of the storybook and I would be put back on the shelf to be forgotten forever. Would my final mark on this world be the name on my tombstone or the lives that I changed? Your legacy is what you leave behind in the world that people remember forever. It's not always what you do for yourself that matters, but rather, what you do for the future. Of course, you won't be around to see it, but you will remembered as one of the creators.

Create the legacy you want, not the story that society expects. Dream with determination, wish with the willpower to act and visualize the life you want. Dare to stand alone and remember that for a path to be followed, it must first be created.

- The Anonymous