What makes you think you can’t leave a significant positive legacy?

You can get involved with your neighbors. Invest in your local community. Adopt an orphan or volunteer at a women’s shelter.

There’s a million things you can do to make a significant impact. Every person you invest in is another person who can go and invest in others.

This idea that anything that’s below the national or worldwide level isn’t significant is a cancer on society.

There are people who lived hundreds of years ago who, sure, you’ll probably have never heard of if you don’t live in the same area as me, but who have had huge impact on the community. The same is true for where you live. I promise you.

Bring your eyes down, and look to make your legacy local. I promise you it’s possible. And I promise you that it’s significant.

It’s not that hard to leave a significant positive legacy. It only needs to be person-sized. Did you have one pretty good child? Congratulations, you did it! Did you have, like, three good friends? Give yourself a big ol’ check.

These aren’t easy, but they aren’t in general un-do-able.

Every. Damned. Day.

Just trying to be a good person is pretty tough sometimes. People take advantage. It sucks.

No. I think too many people obsess about what happens after they’re gone rather than living their life to the fullest. One doesn’t need to make it into history books to leave an impact on the world around them.

The following is a story I was told as a child that I think puts some if this in perspective:

One day a man was walking along the beach when he noticed a boy picking something up and gently throwing it into the ocean. Approaching the boy, he asked, “What are you doing?”

The youth replied, “Throwing starfish back into the ocean. The surf is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them back, they’ll die.”

“Son,” the man said, “don’t you realize there are miles and miles of beach and hundreds of starfish? You can’t make a difference!”

After listening politely, the boy bent down, picked up another starfish, and threw it back into the surf. Then, smiling at the man, he said, “I made a difference for that one.”

Indifferent.

I’ve been through things that should have killed me.

I’m just happy the ride isn’t over yet.

Being stardust that can think about what stardust is, is pretty neat.

… Maybe I’ll try to make an apple pie sometime soon…

Not really. It would be cool to leave a mark on the world, but once I’m dead, I won’t be around to care.

I am more enthusiastic about that are already people living now that will see the year 2100.

No. I’m here while I’m here, and I do my best to help people, when I can and am capable anyways.

There’s no stopping the clock, everyone has their time…

I do yeah. It takes like 1/3 of our lives to mature, 1/3 to do something, and the last 1/3 is to try to match the performance of what we were able to achieve before we wither away.

I thought about this a lot and I’m pretty burnt out at all the horrible shit I’ve seen so I don’t really fear death but like everyone else I obviously don’t want it to be horrible. That being said as an agnostic I think that living a life where you do your best to be a good person is a more powerful legacy than you realize. Billions of people caring about eachother and doing their best makes a huge impact on the future. Sure we have fun learning about those who had impressive monuments built in their name or were leaders in some kind of movement but progress is multilateral and made from a million failures before a success. good or bad history was created by billions of unknowns and that is what really made up history and culture. We really have the power collectively to shape the future not as much with individualism unless you were born into privilege but with working diligently everyday to reinforce your values. Just make your little piece of the world better everyday and it will make a difference over time

Not really. “Legacy” doesn’t mean anything to me as it won’t matter when I’m dead because I’m dead.

My kids are my legacy. Whether that’s positive or negative is up to them at this point.

Regardless of that, I used to be terrified of dying. When I was younger because I hadn’t experienced or accomplished anything. Heck, George Lucas planned nine Star Wars film’s and I couldn’t die before I’d seen them all! (In retrospect, maybe that wasn’t as important as it seemed at the time.) Getting older it was because my family wasn’t ready.

Now I’m in my fifties and my body is already falling apart. My dad and father in law are in better physical shape than me due to back and joint issues. My kids are pretty close to self-sustaining — as much as they’ll ever be.

I’m as immortal as someone without big ambitions can be. I’ll never have a statue or exhibit in a museum or book written about me, but I’d be pretty happy with a park bench in a scenic spot. I don’t want to be buried, but it would be nice to have that as a place anyone who cares to could go and remember me — not some gaudy marble surrounded by death.

What more could I want other than people who love me and remember me for a time? And between now and the end, I’ve got things to keep me busy. Computer games and learning woodworking. Travel. Continuing to grow as a person. I’m not done living by any means, but I’m okay with dying. I imagine it’ll suck at the time, but all things end. Even the universe.

Lol, I’m probably dead in 30 years or less. I’m over half way there because of a major health condition I lost the genetic lottery on. It is what it is. I like to think I’ve raised a child capable of empathy, that’s all I can do.

Do you feel sad about the fact that you’ll probably die within 100 years (or less)

A quote from Richard Dawkins:

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?

Eh. Marks on the world are hardly ever single instances of action by single people.

Way I see it, if I can end up contributing in whatever small ways to better myself, my neighbors, my country, and the world through whatever small acts I can then I will.

I do what I do for the sake of belief in myself, and those around me, if something comes out of it then all the better, if not then better fail than never have tried.