End-of-year legacy blues: It comes when none is actively sought

Twenty-eight years ago to the day, the editors at TIME magazine decided to revolutionise their traditional Person of the Year cover. They decided that in 1982 there was no ‘thing’ more important on the planet than a frightfully expensive little gizmo called the Computer, and in doing so stuck by their selection motto of choosing a person, or machine that “for better or for worse, has done the most to influence the events of the year.”

Every year, around this time, newspapers, magazines, TV channels and the Internet buzz with list lust… ‘The most influential’, ‘the most powerful’, ‘the richest’, et al. But let’s face it, the lists we’d really like to see are probably ‘the world’s ugliest’, ‘the world’s laziest’, and of course, the eternal ‘the world’s dumbest’. But we won’t. Why? Because year-ender lists are all about legacy. And getting on that list requires ambition, selfishness, and a smidgen of sadism.

Most of us will be forgotten by the turn of the century, lost in the wastes of life’s convoluted matrix as our atoms leap molecular barriers to form the stuff of distant stars and puppy dog’s tails. Our legacy is minuscule. Having said that, there will be those among us with enough drive, intelligence, and sheer will, to get out there and do great things, or even tyrannical ones (on the legacy scale they have equal weight).

The most enduring legacies are those born of unbridled ambition. Take Hitler for instance. Was he a genocidal maniac? Undoubtedly. Did he make sure his own country was a pile of rubble before taking his own life? Definitely. Will he be remembered in the centuries to come? Certainly.

The likes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and Osama bin Laden may be dark arterial smears on the pages of history, but they are smears historians will use for aeons to highlight the many failings of man. It is those names that will ring out in warning through the ages, having surpassed the former standard-bearers of Atilla, Genghis and Pope Urban II.

But what of those who us who are quite unwilling to rush out and gas a certain section of society; those who just don’t have the stomach for mass murder; or the broad shoulders for a good pillage? For us legacy is far more complicated. Without the slash and burn of an empire-eater, or the gazillions of the new age philanthropist, we have to rely on the one thing that makes us the weakest… ourselves.

To many, leaving a legacy would probably mean making sweeping changes to people’s lives, doing good and giving to charity. After all, we all want to leave a positive legacy, don’t we? But the names on charity rosters have faded, and change is something we come to accept as part of our journey to the end. The ebb and flow of influence is merely something we withstand along the way.

Real legacy comes when none is actively sought. It doesn’t come so much in being remembered, but in being imbibed. It’s like the bacteria that flounce around our mouths and intestines — we don’t know they’re there; once they go and we fall ill, we don’t know it’s because of them. We don’t consider them at all. But there they are moulding our habits and ways, silently, with nudges rather than shoves.

Someone once told me that the greatest team leader is one who makes himself redundant, because he has achieved his ultimate goal — to train people do to what he does, as well, if not better, than he could. After he walks away, it’s business as usual, but he will always be there, in the processes, in the mindsets, and above all, in the work ethic. He may never be remembered, but in his colleagues’ everyday actions, his ghosts wander.

But to want that legacy is to be selfless, and as human beings, selfless is not in our genes. We are animals programmed to survive. We see a ladder and we want to climb it. We see a hurdle and we want to jump it… damn those following behind.

Unfortunately, in this day and age, and probably forever, talking oneself up and crowing about one’s achievements is the only way to get to the top, from whence the mirage of eternal legacy beckons. And if you have talent coupled with a membership to the Mutual Admiration Society, then the sky’s the limit. Talent alone will not get you to the top, though a lack of talent may still see you straddling worlds.
But at the top it’s a mirage. There’s no substance. There’s no longevity, because right behind you, nipping at your heels are the hordes of similar beings, jostling for the space you covet. You’re a statistic… a fleeting mote in a materialistic god’s eye.

If you want legacy, then don’t seek it. You may not be remembered, but your work will. The training wheels you carry around to help life’s cyclists-in-need will be thought back upon with fondness, although they may forget the man who supplied them.

You may never make it to any end-of-year lists, but those that do have met you, or someone like you. They have stumbled and looked to you for help. They have erred and you have supplied the correction. Eventually, they outgrew you, as you intended them to. Eventually, they climbed and chased the illusion. But you stayed behind knowing that the next group of runners would need you just as much. And they do.