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What is legacy?
I googled it on Sunday morning. Here are a few results:
According to Wikipedia: “In historical terms, a legacy is something that is handed down from one period of time to another period of time.”
Read the entry in its entirety here: simple.wikipedia.org/Legacy.
“a condition that is left or created by an organization, individual or group of community leadership. A legacy can be negative, due to a lack of action and disagreement or positive, as a result of collaboration, strategic actions and commitment.”
www.connectsi.us
“Legacy was an American dramatic television series which aired on UPN from 1998-1999″. wikipedia.org (TV series)”
“Bequest: (law) a gift of personal property by will” princeton.edu
Why was I looking for it? Because in a period of a couple of weeks I read a few very interesting articles, all applying to this term, and soon I was pondering a question: What is our, as individuals, legacy to the future generations in general, and to our own children in particular? Will it be a legacy of our deeds or the legacy of the amount of money? What is more important? Will the children appreciate the money left and forget the names of those, whose legacy it was? Or regardless of the monetary value, will they cherish what we’ve done?
It’s difficult to live in times of a fast and furious progress. The demands on the individuals sometimes are greater, than they can handle. The reports praising a 24 or less years old genius’s earning an obscene amount of money makes a 50 years old professional in some industries cry in despair. The long and traditional education, and years of work experience compared with the relatively short, but rich in computer science studies, produce the results, which put the economy and personal lives of people in a very askew perspective. The stress of achieving the success breaks many and makes few.
To me, the history is a final product of a collective effort of human beings at one period, defined by the number of years or centuries. Every period in a history of humankind has its victories and inventions, wars and intrigues, songs and trends.
What do we see on the front pages of today’s newspapers? Loan crisis, foreclosures, political scandals, wars, countless articles on deficit mounting, speculation about who the responsible parties are, extensive coverage of medical insurance inadequacy and an uncertain future of the aging population, financial scams, children robbed of the happy future by the society, and weak schooling programs, etc.
When we read about somebody, who’s selling a rare painting, which has been in the family for centuries, what do we think? When we read about somebody’s auctioning an important historical document, what do we think? Who and why buys or sells it? Will they give money to charities? Well, charities are abundant and very difficult to monitor. Too often they betray the trust, which people put in them.
It sure feels good being able to donate to charities, but why don’t we see the life getting any better?
If you click on the link, leading to a WSJ, you’ll read about rich people being concerned about charities, too. blogs.wsj.com
Here is Warren Bufett’s view on life and taxes: business.timesonline.co.uk
As for the legacy, let’s train the memory on the name of our ancestors and descendants, because the times we live in are big on the progress and miniscule on the human happiness and what it’s made of. Family heirlooms are sold to make present generations to retain the quality of life their parents have enjoyed.
“For nearly two centuries, the descendants of American Revolutionary War hero Marquis de Lafayette have guarded closely a gold medal given to him by the family of George Washington, allowing it to be displayed in public only a handful of times. Now, they have decided that the family’s future is more valuable than its past.”
That’s one of the scenarios, read about it here:
www.iht.com
And then there’s Magna Carta, which is going up for auction on Tuesday.
It’s a document of unique historical value.
“This will be the first time any version of the Magna Carta has ever gone up for auction, according to David Redden, vice chairman of Sotheby’s. The Magna Carta is expected to fetch at least $20 million to $30 million”.
That’ll be a very expensive piece of paper, because it’s the legacy.
“Magna Carta…”the most important document on earth…” “I can call it the birth certificate of freedom,” he said.
“The charter mandated the English king to cede certain basic rights to his citizens, ensuring that no man is above the law.
Many believe the Magna Carta was the first document to recognize the legal right to freedom from tyranny, an influential concept to American political philosophers - from the founding fathers to the modern presidency… The document was first devised in 1215, but not confirmed into English law until 1297 - the year this version was issued and sealed by King Edward I.”
“The version up for auction rested for six centuries with the Brundell family in Deene Park, England, until being bought in 1984 by businessman Ross Perot. Since then, the Perot Foundation has kept the copy on display at the National Archives in Washington.”
“The Perot Foundation plans to distribute the money from the auction to various causes such as medical research and helping wounded soldiers.” cnn.com
“Written in ink on a 710-year-old sheet of animal skin vellum and bearing the wax seal of King Edward, the manuscript has held up surprisingly well. Although it is marred by some staining and missing words, Sotheby’s Magna Carta, or Great Charter, is about 14 inches wide by 16 inches high and features 2,500 Latin words densely packed into 68 lines of text. Most of it is legible, particularly if you use a magnifying glass. The now-sepia-colored handwriting is exquisite, in an elegant chancery script with flourishes on perfectly formed letters that are only about one-eighth-inch high.”
“Quite frankly, the reason it’s called Magna Carta is it’s big,” said Redden, noting that because the document was long and vellum was valuable, scribes had to write in the most economical manner possible.
But, he added, “In a very important way it doesn’t matter what it looks like because what one is offering is one of the most important symbols of world history.” chicagotribune.com
Was there a point in today’s column? Yes, of course, musing on the subject of legacy. What is mine? What belongs to other people? What’s government’s? Only I really doubt, that the pieces of a puzzle on legacy will ever be put snugly together by anybody. Many opinions, many rules, many income tax brackets. While having the best intentions in our hearts, we’ll never be able to realize what our legacy will be on a global scale.
P.S. I wrote this article in the morning, then I did some chores, and later dropped by my parents’ home. We talked about some absolutely unimportant things, and then as I was getting up to go home, my father picked up a thick album from the side chair and dropped it on the table. I instantly knew what was in it: my legacy. I saw all these pictures and documents before, but now all of it in one place, it made sense.
It downed on me in completely different sense.
That album contained pictures of my grandparents, of which I knew only one, and my parents’ pictures. Those were pictures, making one family’s history.
There were pictures of my father as an officer during WWII and later, of my very young and unfamiliar looking mother, but the most treasured, was a piece of old, yellow with time, glued with a scotch tape at the lines where folded, newspaper dated March, 1944. In 3 places sides are carefully thorn out, leaving a glaring empty square space: those pieces were used for the handmade, rolled up cigarettes. The legacy itself is printed in the paper: my father’s name, #14 on the list, among a few, who got a medal for the battle of the Stalingrad, among many, who died, protecting their motherland from Nazi’s.
He was saying again, how important this paper was for him, looked at this relic smiling and proud of the deeds done, and at that moment I thought again: this is the legacy he leaves to me and I am perfectly content with it, it’s a treasure. I was standing there, living through one of those moments, when fathers and children are one.
