Legacy is all about the future

Legacy is all about the future

by Lindsey Dawson

Legacy is an odd sort of word. It seems olde-worlde on the face of it, a word that smacks of ancestors and inheritance, of legal matters like wills and trusts, and memories of favourite aunts and the smell of flowers in gardens we used to love as children.

And yet it’s a sharp-edged modern word as well, for hardly ever in history have been people been so thoughtful about what sort of legacy we are leaving to our children and grandchildren.
With the international financial situation looking so uncertain we worry about the huge debt we are to be piling for our kids to cope with.

Many of us are acutely conscious of the environmental health of the planet . The debate can seem too big for us to manage but when we bring it down to the childhoods enjoyed by most New Zealanders we know we want the same conditions to be there for our grandchildren too.

I remember as a teenager rowing on Lake Rotoiti and being amazed, even then, at the clarity of the water I floated on. Crystal water can’t be guaranteed in New Zealand lakes now.

At the beach where I now live, half an hour north of  Auckland, I used to go collect pipi with my dad 40 years ago. You needed to scrape off only a few inches of sand to quickly fill a flax kete with plump delights. But of course we weren’t the only ones looking for bounty, and as more and more people visited the beach it became harder and harder to find shellfish.  The bed was cleaned out years ago.

Now I’m taking my own grand-daughter there, that experience is impossible to share with her. 
When I hit my 50s and was full-on in corporate life, it was interesting how often I’d sit round with friends and associates and talk about how we had this nagging feeling the time had come when we should be giving back in some way. That’s when you find yourself volunteering, doing stuff for nothing, helping out where you can in a thousand different ways - even if it’s just greeting a new neighbour with a plate of cookies.

That’s about spreading legacy-thinking too - about caring and warmth and the importance of sharing.
It’s all so natural of course. You spend your earlier years going hard out at doing well, raising good kids and accomplishing things and then a time almost inevitably comes when you start thinking about the big picture.
I remember being struck one day by realising I was at a life stage when I knew or had memory of five generations of my own family: grandparents, parents, siblings, children and grandchildren.  My grandparents were born in 1880s. My grandchildren are being born now. What a stretch of time! What a lot of life!
And how good it is to see some of our society’s leaders working in the legacy field, such as historian Dame Anne Salmond. Not content with writing wonderful books about Pacific history, she has an eagle eye on the future as well.

If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend the article she’s written for the New Zealand Herald, in which she urges us to have a change of heart…http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10759752

About Lindsey: 
Lindsey Dawson, a regular contributor on wisanow, is all about communication - as a writer, editor, author, TV host and speaker. Lindsey's recently added to her string of seven previously published books with a short but powerful guide to writing about your own life. Why are people drawn to do that ? Because, she says, "We're all a bit like an egg – bland on the outside but bursting with richness inside the shell."

* Lindsey can speak to your group , company or charity www.lindseydawson.com

Contact Lindsey
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