Letting Go Of Legacy

Perhaps the most common word I've always heard in the same breath as retirement is "legacy." In fact it's pretty much touted as some kind of trophy from the beginning of one's professional career. "What will be your legacy?" say all the pundits, advice givers, mentors and peers. What will be my stamp on the institution, how many young minds will follow in my footsteps while reverently invoking my name, how can whatever innovation I created continue on forevermore, where will my portrait be hung, my statue erected?

Maybe craving legacy comes from scarcity mindset, a human need to gather. The need to feel a sense of permanence, and permanent recognition, about how what I achieved will go on and on, like that Celine Dion song for the Titanic movie. Why such a need to leave a residue behind? Perhaps because it's a way to indulge a kind of fantasy of timelessness, or time travel, I guess to help our existential anxiety.

It's not that I want all the progress I've toiled over to be erased, yet who knows, maybe it will, and I choose to be OK with that. But "legacy" doesn't actually make me more real or my achievements more legitimate. And this instinct for legacy can get ugly. It can lead to greed; for if a little legacy is good, then isn't more better? More money, more fame, more stuff. And.. sadly, we've all seen those individuals who should have retired a long time ago, but still hang on, endlessly seeking an audience for the discoveries and adventures of their youth.

So to leave aside an attachment to legacy is to go forward in a Buddhist way, with curiosity, neutrality and unattachment to the past and permanence. And even though most things will be let go, some things, like treasured friendships, will be coming along for the adventures ahead.