Each of the past three weeks I have learned about a death that has affected me to varying degrees. Each person who died has gotten sequentially further away from me: a family member, a coworker and a celebrity. All of these people have left behind a legacy.
The Tuesday prior to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (who himself left a profound legacy), I learned that my husband’s grandmother died. “Maggle,” as our daughter and the other great-grandkids called my husband’s grandmother, moved to Pennsylvania from Japan in the mid-1950s. Sitting beside her GI husband, she carried part of her legacy in her arms with her on the boat to the U.S.: my then-infant father-in-law. Maggle’s stories of growing up outside Tokyo during WW II and arriving in a country where the buildings, cars and people were bigger than anything she imagined are also part of her legacy. The courage that it took for her to take the risk of leaving her life and culture behind to build a new life in the United States also lives on as inspiration for her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. During dinner on Sunday night, my six-year-old, African American daughter told my husband that she wanted to cut off the quarter of him that is Japanese and add it to herself so she can always remember Maggle—which would truly be a living legacy.
On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day I received word that a coworker had suffered a heart attack and died at home the previous day. She had been at our firm for well over a decade, and she was a leader on boards of organizations that serve both the legal marketing and legal technology communities. One of the Facebook groups I belong to addressing the former community had posts from several people grieving the loss of our friend and colleague, and a newsletter I receive that serves the legal technology community dedicated its Wednesday issue that week to her memory. Although she had no children of her own, my coworker’s legacy lives on through her generosity of spirit and the intelligent systems and processes she put in place for the team she built at our firm and the people she volunteered with on the boards on which she served.
Finally, news of Kobe Bryant’s sudden death dominated the news this past Sunday. Talking heads on television discussed his legacy for hours, and some of my coworkers were comparing hearing the news of his death to learning of Princess Diana’s premature passing, Michael Jackson’s overdose and even the attacks of 9/11.
Perhaps the billionaires gathered at Davos last week had their own legacies in mind as they were promoting ESG criteria as important indicators of long-term value creation. That would comport with Kimberly Wade-Benzoni’s research that finds that, “Thinking about your legacy is also a great way to ensure that you are taking into account the long-term perspective of your organization and resisting the temptation to make myopic decisions that are overly focused on short-term gain.” In the same HBR article she notes, “People are more concerned with avoiding leaving a negative legacy than with creating a positive one.” What could be a more “negative legacy” than making our home planet uninhabitable?
Similarly, Mark McDermott and Oona McEwan from the University of East London have found that, “legacy awareness is a major element in people’s search for meaning.” Their research indicates that, “being aware of our ability to provide a legacy that outlives us can be an excellent way to motivate ourselves to accomplish more, stay healthy, focus on the here and now, and maintain good relationships.”
At times when you’re confronted with mortality, even by merely glancing at the obits in your local newspaper, it can be a good opportunity to contemplate what you’d like people to remember you for once the inevitable happens. In the words of Benjamin Disraeli, “The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example.” What will your legacy be?