15 - Diego B: The Life of Legacies

Our lives mean a great deal to us as well as those around us. However, life can often seem fleeting and easily lost. Sometimes it is so short that we forget to realize the missed opportunities which we create in our lives and can only reflect on how one’s life could be different if they chose a certain course of action. These opportunities may have not only affected our welfare, but the welfare of others as well. These opportunities build toward an eventual legacy, a legacy realized when our actions and effects on those around us become fixed in society. There are two kinds of deaths: one where one dies and cannot play with the world anymore, and another where our name and our influence is last noticed by those after us. It is the second which we should strive to preserve. Legacies vary in terms of quality; one may find enjoyment in abusing their powers, or they may attempt to cherish the minds of others, one may find a new way to shape the world and our relation with it. The legacies which we strive for, the enduring life which you may wish to pursue, can only be shaped by the actions and opportunities which arise in our lives and the decisions which we make with them. Our legacies can only be realized due to the opportunities which we may have missed, as well as the opportunities ahead of us. The challenge of life, however, is that it only provides us with so much time to affect those opportunities. Pursue your legacy even if life will not give you forever to realize it, because in the long run, one will never really die until their legacy is forgotten.