do u worry about your legacy?

other than not wanting to friends and family to be upset, I find myself not giving a shit if anybody remembers me in 20 years or if my bloodline dies with me and my brother. I won't be around to see it, and frankly, I don't deserve to be remembered for much.

some folks I know are really obsessed with it, and that's fine, I don't judge. what say y'all?

used to care quite a bit about a continued existence post-death in the memories of strangers but then i saw the youths tweeting "what are the beatles" after some awards show like 8-10 years ago and thought eh

obligatory planet's boiling up anyways

Yes but I’ve also become very fond of doing things with minimal effort.

I want my legacy to be as wide-reaching as this Sumerian joke from 3100-2900 BC:

Something which has never occurred since time immemorial... a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap.

no

the world will literally be burning up in 30 years

Oh I thought that was already happening

I've written books, which you would think means I care about "literary immortality" or something. But I don't care if they go out of print, now or after I die. And I don't have "archives," really - I've deleted the audio recordings of most of the interviews I've conducted, 20+ years' worth, and have failed to save tearsheets for hundreds if not thousands of articles. So...I guess I don't care that much.

DGAF, but it would be cool to leave one great song or photograph anonymously that people in the After Times puzzle over. Don’t care about my name living on but something to keep the poor bastards temporarily occupied.

I have definitely come around to the concept that your most important legacy is with your friends, colleagues and children, the people who actually know you, when before my daughter was born I think I had much more grandiose ideas about how I should be contributing to the world, or something.

✖ pretty otm re: the beatles. But that depends on people remembering names, and I think I’d prefer any legacy I leave behind just to be useful, whether my name is associated or not. “you’ll never believe what you can accomplish if you don’t worry about who gets the credit” etc

also tombot agreeing with milo shockah

i worry about existing as fully as possible in every moment that's given to me

The trick is not to worry about that.

lol considering just how much time i've spent building a music collection i sort of wish it would somehow outlive me. but it won't, whatever

i want to do something while i'm alive that i'm genuinely very proud of, but hoping for a legacy feels indulgent. i do hope that i can give the love back that i've received, but i sometimes struggle with that due to depression

yes. I don't care about making the most of my life or any kind of legacy, just like existing, even in this restricted world

giving back love is more important than any legacy

I just had the front axle of my 1997 Legacy station wagon replaced along with new brake fluid, an oil change, and a general mechanical inspection, so even though I plan to drive it about 750 miles in the next week or so, I'm not very worried about it. It only has 142,000 miles on it and it still gets 32 mpg on long summer trips that are almost all highway miles.

I told my wife last week she should play VH's "Dance the Night Away" at my funeral. How's that for a legacy?

I used to care more about this as I had some weird belief that your soul lived on but not in the "religious" sense. weird how that was comforting to me at one point, and now would be terrifying.

and yet I find myself wracked with guilt more than ever over minor things to where I have to wonder if I'm not worried about "legacy", why do I care so much about how I'm perceived....

as I get older I feel more and more guilty too about everything

I wouldn't say I worry about it--I most definitely think about it, as irrational as that may be.

ILXors with children, has that changed your perspective on this pesky question?

Ok aimless wins

Slightly more seriously, I have an intellectually disabled kid and a gay kid (who recently asked me if I was okay with not having biological grandchildren). I have no concern at all about my "line" or "my name dying out."

My creative work may or may not survive me - most of it is trivial and ad-hoc anyway. I can't imagine caring about it.

But. If I have ever been kind or thoughtful to someone, or ever done something selfless or noble or just plain nice for someone? If some consequence of my advocacy or activism or charity could live on? Fuck yeah.

I would like to think that the positivity in those acts ripples outward into the universe and has some beneficial effect that has the potential to outlive me.

In the most tritely karmic "pay it forward" kind of way, I would like that sort of thing to continue after me. Not so that I might get credit, but just because I want to have had a more positive then negative impact overall.

*than

I would like to think that the positivity in those acts ripples outward into the universe and has some beneficial effect

I am certain the signature of our thoughts and deeds is indelibly written into the universe and can't be erased. But what that might mean on a universal scale is more than I can figure out.

Yes. Not enough to disturb sleep.

i.e. contra the rest of the tread, I DO want to be remembered. It's not a big deal to think so.

i do worry. i don't want my life to be a dead end. i'd like to have kids someday.

Famous exchange from Breathless: "What's your greatest ambition?" "To become immortal, then die."

I'm trying to flip that around.

as a writer, i like to think that someone might read something i've written years after i've died and enjoy it. otherwise, i find it hard to care much about this these days.

ILXors with children, has that changed your perspective on this pesky question?

as a writer, i like to think that someone might read something i've written years after i've died and enjoy it

With no kids, my "legacy"--I'd feel stupid not putting it in quotations--will reside there and with the students I taught. I'm more confident of the latter--that years and years later, they will encounter somebody I spoke about or something I showed them on YouTube and think "Oh yeah, that..." Even if they can't retrieve my name from memory.

xp your children will remember you, they will tell stories about you to your grandchildren

don't see how it goes much further than that though

"and then...he got EXCELSIORED, after years of being overlooked. That's right boys. Your grandpa was funny once"

lol

To expand a bit, I think raising our daughter has had the effect of changing my abstract, BIG IDEAS concept of “legacy” to something much more immediate and practical, like hey let me see if I can work on something that will just make her life and her friends’ lives a little better, instead of some just some personal ambition to get my name attached to a thing my peers tell me is cool. These aren’t necessarily exclusive of one another, but man, there was a time when I really cared about some dumb hero shit.

I worry about my crimes coming to light

Phil Collins has a spotlight waiting for you

every day i get up and i worry about how the hell i am going to get through today

usually at 4 in the morning

"legacy" i guess isn't at the top of my worries list

my legacy is every amazing post i make on this, the greatest website in the world

An' me wi' a bad legacy tae.

No.

A resounding no.

i've put all my legacy eggs in the promotion of Perrin tweets