Legacies are about life, living, and making a difference at all ages. They are about learning from the past, living in the present, and hoping for the future.
Goals of the Legacy Project
The Legacy Project is a national initiative under the Parenting Coalition with Generations United, both based in Washington, DC. It has been developed and is coordinated by The Communication Project. It has a number of goals:
1. To explore, document, encourage, and celebrate the legacies -- the meaningful personal histories, memories, heritages, traditions, values, hopes, and life lessons -- passed along from generation to generation.
2. To encourage and support closer relationships across generations -- letting parents, grandparents, and other adult mentors and role models know that they can and are making a difference in the lives of children, and letting the young know that the old need them as well.
3. To help people of any age be their best by identifying, creating, and achieving meaningful life maps that result in a positive legacy.
4. To celebrate individuals, organizations, and corporations who are making a difference and creating positive legacies.
5. To explore issues and ideas from a multigenerational, life course, legacy perspective in light of changing world age demographics and social, political, and economic challenges.
6. To encourage the active participation of all generations, individuals, organizations, and corporations in building healthy, supportive, sustainable communities -- on neighborhood, city, national, and global levels -- that work responsibly in the present toward a hopeful future that remembers its past.
How The Legacy Project Began
and What It Is
The Legacy Project has been inspired by the hundreds of letters, calls, faxes, and e-mails received from children and adults across the country in response to the award-winning book Something to Remember Me By. This seemingly simple intergenerational story about special connections and legacies across generations prompts discussion and inspires both young and old to think about legacies in their own lives. Once you start thinking about legacies and intergenerational relationships, this kit (and the others which are part of the project) takes you to the next step with plenty of ideas, information, and activities.
The Legacy Project is ongoing, with a variety of activity theme kits available at different times of the year (The Holidays, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, and Grandparents Day). The activity kits are for use by schools, seniors groups/facilities, community groups, and families. There are also contests run throughout the year to focus attention on certain themes and activities, and a series of workshops at sites across the country.
Each activity theme kit is updated and expanded annually (activities are added, information and resources are updated, and we incorporate feedback and ideas from across the country). The latest information and the newest activity kit are always available at www.legacyproject.org. The website offers the free edition of each kit. There's a more complete, printed edition of each activity kit available through The Communication Project, along with the Legacy Project Binder which holds all the kits. Contact The Communication Project (1-800-772-7765 or tcp@tcpnow.com) for more information on the printed activity kit editions, binder, as well as book discounts available as part of the Legacy Project.
Part I of this Holiday Activity Kit starts with a special section that explores the meaning of and hope for peace. In no other context is the importance of legacy clearer -- the world we create for ourselves, what we learn from the past, and what we pass on to future generations. Then there's a look at the magic of traditions and rituals, as well as the contributions older adults make to our society and economy.
This Holiday Activity Kit is being offered with a Holiday Contest for adults and children 8 years and older. The Holiday Contest runs until December 31.
Part II of this kit is full of activity ideas for young and old. Celebrate the spirit of the season and bring the generations closer together.
The last part of this kit, Part III, lists other related websites, organizations, and books (including storybooks with intergenerational themes).
The Legacy Project Partners include The Communication Project, Parenting Coalition International, Generations United, Lane Furniture, MyFamily.com, Geezer.com, Memory Makers magazine, IBM, and Books Are Fun (Reader's Digest).
Legacy and You
There's an old saying that a parent's heart is a child's schoolroom. Your dreams, your efforts, your examples and loving attention -- these set the boundaries for your child's education and future. Every day, all day long, we are presented with choices. Some are simple, some are not. Every choice we makes goes into creating who we are and, in large measure, who our children and grandchildren will become. Our character is our legacy, and our legacy is ultimately a moral legacy. At the most immediate level, that's the essence of legacy.
The Legacy Project also looks at legacy broadly. I believe legacy is fundamental to what it is to be human, and that a sense of legacy is largely what's missing today. Research shows that without a sense of working to create a legacy, adults lose meaning in their life. Exploring the idea of legacy offers a glimpse not only into human relationships and building strong communities, but also the human spirit.
The idea of legacy may remind us of death, but it is not about death. Being reminded of death is actually a good thing, because death informs life. It gives you a perspective on what's important. But legacy is really about life and living. It is about learning from the past, living in the present, and hoping for the future. It helps us decide the kind of life we want to live and the kind of world we want to live in.
A legacy may take many forms -- children, grandchildren, a business, an ideal, a book, a community, a home, some piece of ourselves. Our legacy naturally intrigues us. It's perfectly understandable that we would want to know how the world will remember us after we're gone. How many of us will be surprised? How many of us are living our lives so that our legacy reflects all that we truly hold most near and dear? How many of us are living with integrity? We do the best we can. And that's all anyone can ask. This project is about helping you do the best you can.
Reaching Out Across Time
If you don't have some sort of life map, you end up wandering around hopelessly lost. Some people chart the road better than others, but I've found that most people's maps are incomplete and insufficient. What is the place of a human being in this world -- When you're young? When you're old? How do you live a full and meaningful life? Each of us answers that question differently. Former President Jimmy Carter, who found himself leaving office at the relatively young age of 56 and had to decide how to make his remaining years count, has linked the meaning of his life to his peace building work and has always had a strong sense of legacy:
I have one life and one chance to make it count for something... I'm free to choose what that something is, and the something I've chosen is faith. Now, my faith goes beyond theology and religion and requires considerable work and effort. My faith demands -- this is not optional -- my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I can, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference.
The word "generativity" was coined in 1950 by psychoanalyst Erik Erikson. It is the second last stage of the eight stages into which he divided the human life cycle. He came up with the term because he felt words like "productivity" and "creativity" were too narrow to encompass all the ways we try to make our mark on the future. At its simplest level, generativity is about providing for succeeding generations. It's choosing to take an active interest in guiding the next generation. In its broadest sense, generativity is the desire to put your energy into things that will outlive you. It's a sense that your life is worthwhile and extends beyond yourself. Erikson called the life cycle itself "a system of generation and regeneration."
Erikson saw generativity as a stage of later life. More recently, researchers have treated it as a personality trait. In other words, the idea is that some people, no matter what their age, have more of it than others, or at least choose to be more conscious of it. Not everyone focuses on generativity. Those who don't, tend to become absorbed in themselves. They may have gained material success, but find life boring and feel that something is missing, even though they're not certain what it is they long for. Neither education nor privilege seem to be connected with generativity, but successfully dealing with challenges faced earlier in life may. Women tend to score higher on measures of generativity, since they are still largely the kinkeepers in families.
People weren't very interested in Erikson's concept of generativity when he first proposed it. He was seemingly ahead of his time. With today's shifting demographics, we may now be ready. It is a rich and deep concept that has to do not only with nurturing the generations that follow us, but with creating legacies and leaving the world a bit better than we found it. In a time when so many people are searching for meaning, it's about creating something meaningful and lasting.
The Moment Versus Eternity
A primary challenge of human beings is living in the present, making choices about the present, but with the awareness of an uncertain future. The most extreme example of this dilemma is knowledge of our own mortality. But life is full of occasions when we have to make important decisions with limited information. The fundamental indeterminacy of the future is an essential quality of human experience. We can never know exactly what's in store for us, yet we still try to live a good and meaningful life.
No one can survive living simply from moment to moment, denying the future. There has to be a weekly rhythm and a connection to something bigger. There has to be a seasonal rhythm, and a generational rhythm. Part of this involves planning, but part also involves an intuitive sense of a natural rhythm. There are ripples of rhythms within rhythms, some things being able to be achieved in a short time span, others perhaps taking years. It's about getting your bearings in eternity.
Said Goethe, "Choose well. Your choice is brief, and yet endless." We don't live in a culture that thinks much about eternity and feels connected to it. Within the sacred circle of life as conceived by Native Americans, different periods of time are set aside for particular purposes. You're expected to recognize the changing of the seasons, to know them as natural progressions in time and to use them to continue to live life. These changing seasons of meaning in the circle of life are understood with the same certainty that you accept the progression from spring to summer to fall. Aging is seen as the grandfather and grandmother time of human life. If people have been shown by example the various ages of life across the years, it's more likely that they will recognize and welcome the whole of life and see it in the context of the greater whole. Community is vital for remembering the past and fulfilling responsibilities to the future. Native Americans recognize the value of maintaining the participation by older adults. Elders fulfill the role of storytellers, teaching children where their people came from and what their culture expects of them.
Expanding our time perspective is a useful way of understanding all kinds of events and issues. It becomes particularly useful when we're trying to understand something as complex as what's going on in the world at large. So many changes are taking place, in so many places on the planet, that looking at what's in this week's newspaper isn't much help in getting true knowledge. It's too much about life in the sensational moment to sensational moment. It's ironic that a sense of history was much greater among the ancients than it is today. The people of India could think in terms of kalpas, which consisted of four thousand million years of human reckoning. The Babylonian tradition, later adapted by the Greeks and by medieval Christendom, included the concept of the Great Year, generally used to refer to a 36,000-year cycle, after which history was thought to repeat itself. On the one hand are such great sweeps of time that individual human events seem insignificant; on the other is such a brief present that it's gone before we know it.
Between these extremes there lies a medium range of time which is neither too long nor too short for immediate comprehension, and which has an organic quality that gives it relevance for the present moment. Social scientist Elise Boulding calls it the 200-year present. That present begins 100 years ago today, on the day of birth of those among us who are centenarians. Its other boundary is the hundredth birthday of the babies born today. This present is a continuously moving moment, always reaching out 100 years in either direction from the day we are in. We are linked with both boundaries of this moment by the people among us whose life began or will end at one of those boundaries, five generations each way in time. It is our space, one that we can move around in directly in our own lives and indirectly by touching the lives of young and old around us. If you use this to think about the world, it's easier to get a grasp of events which can't be properly understood in terms of what's going on this minute, this month, this year.
How Do You Know?
How we respond to the fundamental uncertainty of life and the immenseness of eternity shapes everything we do and is driven in part by how we think about our place in the world, our sense of identity. Some people think of identity as a kind of answer, an ideal or end-state, achieved progressively through an ongoing examination of one's character and qualities. Others see identity as a question, an open-ended journey that's always shifting and changing. For them, the development of self requires a kind of "enlightened indeterminacy" -- a willingness to embrace ambiguity and uncertainty as an integral part of everyday life. For all kinds of people, however, identity is a significant accomplishment. Coping with the uncertainties of your place in the world is key to sanity. Human emotions are also largely determined by our beliefs about the future, by our degree of confidence that things will turn out well for us. The goal is stability without falling into the trap of "certainty," of believing there is one absolute truth.
As we grow up and older, the human mind tends to become less and less like a hummingbird -- flitting easily from new idea to new idea and drinking in the nectar of knowledge -- and more and more like an ocean liner. Our habits of thought provide stability, give us a sense of comfort that we "know" at least enough to make our way in the world, and, by some definitions, help keep us sane. Of course, this very sense of stability can inhibit learning, creativity, and growth. So there's a challenge, particularly to adults as learners: how can you identify and foster promising new ways of thinking while at the same time holding on to the benefits of habits of thinking?
Who learns? Just the young? The general view would have it that learning is mainly an activity of and for the young. A Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson shows a circus dog balancing on a tightrope, performing a complex maneuver that involves juggling with five balls while balancing a vase on his head, swirling a hula-hoop around his waist, and holding a reluctant cat in his mouth. The caption reads, "High above the hushed crowd, Rex tried to remain focused. But still he could not rid himself of one nagging thought. He was an old dog -- and this was a new trick." Like many beliefs, the assumption that an old dog can't learn new tricks may turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
What our world needs, and what we need, particularly as we grow older, is a sense of learning in search of wisdom. Paul Baltes of the Max Planck Institute in Berlin has spent his life investigating wisdom. He defines wisdom as "a state of knowledge about the human condition, about how it comes about, which factors shape it, how one deals with difficult problems, and how one organizes one's life in such a manner that when we are old, we judge it to be meaningful."
The essence of wisdom is in knowing what you don't know, in the appreciation that knowledge is fallible. It's the balance between knowing and doubting. "Wise" action involves the way in which you hold knowledge and put it to use. A "wise" decision implies a "best" solution -- a value-laden judgment. It tries to understand the ultimate consequences of events in a holistic, systemic way.
Wisdom brings together your experience, ability to think, and emotional maturity to make good decisions at an individual and societal level. Wisdom enables a person to adapt to the tasks of everyday life. It's about getting pleasure from health, satisfaction from work, and good use out of wealth. But wisdom is also what will enable us to deal with the increasingly complex problems facing humanity. Wisdom isn't simply for wise people, philosophers, and psychologists. It's for all people and for the future of the world.
Most of today's most influential thinkers believe that wisdom accumulates with age. And while research indicates that some mental functioning like memory may decline with advanced age, wisdom can still flourish apart from other mental functions. Research also confirms that most wise individuals don't think of themselves as possessing any special powers of wisdom. The more they learn, the less they know for certain.
But wisdom isn't something that happens automatically as the result of age. Hard-won self-knowledge is an essential source of wisdom. Wisdom grows only through accepting your life as the life that had to be and is the product of resolve -- resolving the issues of the past combined with tolerance toward your own family past and your choices. It combines an emotional integration of the past, a philosophical attitude toward life, and acceptance of your own mortality without despair.
Said F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." The "wiser" we become, the more paradox we find. And yet we must continue to live in this world and make our way through this paradox. I continue to wrestle with life's complexity, paradox, and contradiction. But this play of opposites is part of any fully lived life, a source of richness -- and the source of wisdom, I would argue. The road to wisdom is an obstacle course. And it isn't found in New Age popularizers, self-promoting hucksters, and charismatic media personalities. It's found in the "boring" people around you. It's found in the struggles of trying to make relationships work. It's found in the overwhelming task of trying to improve the world just a little bit.
Generally, wise persons are thought to project the consequences of a decision far into the future: "I will plant seeds to grow in springs I will not see." To be wise is to have an orientation in time that examines the past for relevant knowledge, experience, and precedent; that examines the present context of the problem to be solved; and that projects into the future the long-range effects.
Wise people recognize their own limitations and the limitations of life. But they also see possibilities and hope.
Hope
Part of the Legacy Project's defining phrase is "hoping for the future." We all need hope, especially now with everything that is happening on the world stage. What is hope? People use the word hope in many contexts. You might think of the three virtues -- faith, hope, and charity. Used in this sense, hope is a quality that imbues an individual with a certain grace in the face of adversity. We are said to have "high hopes." We "hope" something will or will not happen. We say we are "hopeful" about the future. When we use the word "hope" in these ways, it's synonymous with saying "want" or "expectation." What we're really saying is, "I want something to turn out the way I would like." Hope ends up denoting a rather passive, "wait and see attitude" to the desired goal. It isn't an active process used to reach objectives.
The concept of hope I'm talking about as part of this project is more active, more dynamic. Hope is a process, a process that can be learned and pursued. Hope looks at what is and comes up with a plan for achieving what can be. Hope projects alternate realities and is rooted in some deep-seated need to believe that the world can be other than it is.
Said playwright and Czech Republic President Vaclav Havel:
Hope is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the conviction that something is moral and right and just and therefore you fight regardless of the consequences.
Hope is the quality of character that sustains belief under seemingly impossible situations -- when kindness seems impossible or poverty inevitable or when the world seems cruel and life unbearable. People encounter sources of hope in the imagination, in the words and examples of others, and in witness to the natural wonders around us every day. Hope does not extinguish suffering but sustains the belief that there can be an end to it, if not in your own life, then in the future. And so hope propels you into action.
It's All Connected
Leaving a legacy is a human need. It is in part selfish -- we want to feel immortal. The idea of leaving something behind that will "live forever" is appealing. We also want to feel like we matter in the vast sea of humanity. By connecting with those at the beginning of their lives, we do complete a full circle in life's journey and leave some of our "selves" -- our experiences, ideas, values, and personal example -- in the minds and hearts of others. But leaving a legacy also has an altruistic component. If we don't leave a positive legacy, what kind of society are we building? What kind of world are we leaving behind? What are we passing on to our children and grandchildren?
Norman Cousins wrote an intriguing piece related to legacy:
What is the eternal and ultimate problem of a free society?
It is the problem of the individual who thinks that one man cannot possibly make a difference in the destiny of that society.
It is the problem of the individual who doesn't really understand the nature of a free society or what is required to make it work.
It is the problem of the individual who has no comprehension of the multiplying power of single but sovereign units.
It is the problem of the individual who regards the act of pulling a single lever in a voting booth in numerical terms rather than historical terms.
It is the problem of the individual who has no real awareness of the millions of bricks that had to be put into place, one by one, over many centuries, in order for him to dwell in the penthouse of freedom. Nor does he see any special obligation to those who continue building the structure or to those who will have to live in it after him, for better or worse.
It is the problem of the individual who recognizes no direct relationship between himself and the decisions made by government in his name.
Therefore, he feels no special obligation to dig hard for the information necessary to an understanding of the issues leading to those decisions.
In short, freedom's main problem is the problem of the individual who takes himself lightly historically.
This is where the personal becomes political. Through legacy, "me" becomes "we" (and the irony is that "me" actually becomes more in the process). "We" encompasses past and future, old and young, and the society we create and perpetuate. "Society is indeed a contract," said Edmund Burke, a British writer and member of Parliament. "It becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born."
We are all, young and old, part of a larger community, a community that must remember its history to build its future. Community exists before you are born and remains after you are gone. Each part of your life, from childhood to adulthood to older adulthood, has a part in taking in or passing on the lessons of the past in order to create a better future.
Legacy trickles from the big to the small and back up again. There's an old story about a king who asks a wise elder how he can eliminate war in his kingdom. The sage replies:
If you wish to bring order to the nation,
you must first bring order to the provinces.
If you wish to bring order to the provinces,
you must first bring order to the cities.
If you wish to bring order to the cities,
you must first bring order to the families.
If you wish to bring order to the families,
you must first bring order to your own family.
If you wish to bring order to your own family,
you must first bring order to yourself.
Home for the Holidays
From world peace to personal peace. In many ways, the holidays encompass it all -- individual and social, spiritual and secular, the moment and eternity.
As adults looking back on our lives, most of us remember holidays best of all. The pauses between work and school, the warm-oven smells, the traditions and silent moments, and the gatherings of family and friends. The ritualized nature of the holidays -- familiar people and activities year after year -- gives them the unique feel of being time out of time. It's what social researchers call a "succession of eternities." The individual is connected to the family, the family to the culture, and all of us to the steady march of eternity. We are connected to the flow of life.
The holidays are a time for reflection. They are a chance to rededicate ourselves to ideals big and small. They are a time to go home, literally and figuratively, and think about the year past and the year to come. While much has been said about the modern commercialization and trivialization of the holidays, I believe we would be poorer without them. We need some sort of community celebration that brings together the powerful elements of spirituality, family, community, beauty, peace, and hope.
The Legacy Project Revisited
The Legacy Project explores time, eternity, connection, wisdom, hope, meaning, you, us, intergenerational relationships, community building, and just plain everyday living. The more you mine it, the more gold there is to find.
I view the Legacy Project very much as a building project, a bricolage, a putting together of assorted odds and ends to serve the purposes of the moment, but within the context of a bigger picture that remembers the past and looks toward the future. It's about bringing all generations together to explore issues. It's about bringing together diverse groups -- families, schools, seniors groups, community groups, corporations, local and national organizations -- in a way they haven't been brought together before. It's about uniting research and grassroots concerns. It's about synthesizing information into a useful knowledge base. It's about creating momentum in an area that affects all our lives at the most fundamental level possible.
This is big stuff, exhilarating at times, overwhelming at times, and troubling at other times. I find simple answers satisfy me less and less. It can be a challenge wrestling with all of this. But as I said at the start, we all do our best. That's all anyone can ask. This project is about helping you do the best you can. As you do your best to do your best, you might find some solace in the following quote. When I'm feeling overwhelmed by my reality or feel that in the moment I'm not quite measuring up, I find it makes me feel better. It's from Carl Schurz:
