The legacy we leave will depend on what we do now

After my morning swim in the sea at Seaford, which was so nourishing and envigorating, as always, we went to the beautiful little village Rottingdean by the sea.

After a lovely tea and food at Shane’s Kitchen, we wandered around Kipling’s gardens and then took a stroll around the graveyard of the beautiful Norman church.

I felt quite emotional reading the lovely and wonderful tributes on the remembrance plaques and the gravestones. It was a gentle reminder that all things are temporary including our own journey.

We have a limited and unknown number of moments here in our current carnation and having read many of the loving tributes, I thought to myself, firstly, never waste a moment to show love to others that are still here. We often wait for funerals to say the things that we wanted to say about that person who has died but didn’t while they were alive or we do not say them often enough. We didn’t show the person when they were able to hear our loving words or receive our love through our actions, gestures and care towards them.

Secondly, it struck me that now is the only moment that we are actually alive and therefore it is important to make the most of this moment, not just loving ourselves or another soul, but to make experiences, and do the things that we feel and that the mind fears most, say the things we feel, create experiences and share our gift with all other souls.

After all, we will all end our journeys and the legacy that we leave will depend on what we do now.

What will we leave

Our journeys will end some day in the future.

What will we leave behind?

Well, a lot of shit and crap that will end up in a charity shop or skip. The stuff we accumulated and filled our lofts, sheds, cupboards and garages with until we realised life wasn’t about buying more and more stuff that we mainly don’t need and won’t enrich our lives in any way.

What will we want to have left that we will be proud of, something that we are glad that we left the world.

Well a statue could be nice if we’re into the ‘stuff’ is great mentality.

What could be better than statues and unwanted junk is the memories that we create and leave in the heads of those who we met on our journeys.

Memories of laughter, stories, adventures, narrow escapes, tears, kindness, moments of love, words of support, moments that we shared with the world that made a difference.

While we are still here we could choose to spend time creating a legacy of memories for others to cherish when we are gone or we could work longer and harder to constantly upgrade our smartphones or buy a bigger car.