I’m no longer a spring chicken.  Almost five years ago, in one of my first Medium posts, I wrote a letter to my 60-year-old self.  As a 30 year old.  I contemplated the realities of aging while trying to consciously combat any negative consequences I foresaw.  

One reality, however, has become even more apparent over the past five years.  Maybe it’s because people in my life have grown older.  Or sicker.  

When looking back at generations that preceded me, when thinking back through all the history I have ever read or studied, one thing is clear.

You will be forgotten.

Even the greats get forgotten.  Their memories fade as everyone who met them eventually succumbs to the one great certainty of life.  Death.

Time is undefeated.  No human, lifeform, or anything for that matter has defeated Father Time.  He keeps ticking.

Do you think he will one day ever stop?

One thing that stops is any direct memory of you or me.  Even if you achieved something to warrant a sentence in a history book.  Maybe you even had a street named after you.  Or someone hung a picture of you in a public place. 

Do you want some type of legacy?

I think most of us do.  Most of us like to think that when we leave this world, we will not be forgotten. That a piece of us will always live on.  Whether in our children, a business we started, a house we built with our bare hands, or a novel we wrote from the heart.

But while something of you may live on, you will be forgotten after two generations.

I was thinking of this the other day when I realized that I know next to nothing of my great grandparents.  You know, the silly things that make us human.  The food they enjoyed.  The hobbies they practiced.  What made them tick.

I generally know what they did.  I heard stories about their lives.  Some of my family members are really into genealogy so that also helped connect some dots.

But I only truly know them on a cursory level.

Go back another generation or two and it’s even worse.  I know maybe one fact or two about them.  And that makes me sad.  Because my life has been relatively easy, fortunate, and secure.  A big reason for that is obviously my parents, but it’s also the foundation that everyone who came before me helped build.  

Whether it was a daring move across the Atlantic Ocean to start life anew, or traversing the entire North American continent to find a better way of life, these people who came before we deserve a memory or two.  At the very least, they deserve my gratitude.  But it’s hard to give anything beyond, “Thank you.”

I don’t know them.

After thinking about this some more, I realized that one of my biggest motivations for writing is to NOT be forgotten.  I want future generations of my family, and maybe anyone else who cares, to know what I was thinking, feeling, and experiencing.  It’s not for my own vanity or ego.  It’s because I would have loved to have had a glimpse into the past myself.

Writing and other content can only describe so much though.  And I’ll be the first to admit that I certainly don’t publish all of my thoughts and dreams for mass consumption.  I’ve never been disciplined about journaling for myself either.

What I have come more to terms with, however, is the notion of: “You will be forgotten.”

No matter how much I write.  No matter how much content I produce.  There’s no guarantee anyone will even want to read it.  I can’t blame them.  Four generations from now, it’s highly unlikely anyone will care to know who I was, let alone what my thoughts, feelings, and experiences were during Donald Trump’s second impeachment. 

Hell, nobody even really knows who Abraham Lincoln was.  Sure, you could recite what you read in secondary source materials, or from the accounts of others like Ulysses S. Grant, but you wouldn’t really know Lincoln.  Even if you got your hands on primary source documents like any letters he wrote or maybe even a diary he kept, those would only reveal a piece of the larger man.

And that man is everywhere across American life, from Mount Rushmore to cities, parks, and schools, all named after him.  Yet even someone that famous, that revered, is largely forgotten.  Nobody is alive today who met him in person.

So why does any of this matter?  

Well, too many of us live with an obsession over legacy.  What you will be remembered for.  What mark you will make on the world.  

It’s all such an insane race combined with a dog and pony show when you really think about it.  We run from one life event to the other and try to look good while doing it.  Always trying to exude perfection.  As if nothing bad ever happens to us.

Some are obviously more at fault for this than others.  It’s a matter of degree, but I would venture to guess that many of us fall prey to caring too much about careers that don’t care about us, or societal perceptions that definitely don’t give a damn about us.  

And nobody in society 100 years from now will even think about you.  At least on a regular basis.  Not even Abraham Lincoln gets constant attention.  

So instead of living for a legacy or for something to be remembered by, live for today.  Enjoy it.  

What if this life was heaven?  What would you do?  How would you spend your day?

By living with daily gratitude and a present mindset, not only would we be more stress-free about the future, we might even build a better future for ourselves and our families.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t plan or dream.  Just be realistic about the future beyond our lifetimes.  

And most importantly, enjoy the life you have while you still can.