What will be your legacy? What will you leave for the benefit of your children, their children, and all the children who follow them?

   Perhaps you think only of money and property when you think of legacy. But, important as those can be, there’s an even greater gift you can leave those who follow you … and give yourself in the process. That gift is the story of your life.

   Think of someone in your family whom you know little about – perhaps a parent, but more likely a grandparent or great grandparent or even someone further back. Think of some face staring out at you from an old family photo, an interesting face perhaps full of character or humor, the kind of face that compels you to wonder, “Who was that? What was he (or she) like?” Perhaps that face looks a little like yours.

   You wish you knew more about this person. After all, you came from him. His existence led directly to you. The conditions of his life helped create the circumstances of yours. Some of your genes – who you are – came from him.

   Imagine being able to read this person’s story – perhaps it was a woman – the key events of her life, the choices and challenges she faced, the details of her days, and, perhaps most interesting, her thoughts and feelings about what she did and what happened to her. Imagine reading her memories of people, places, events, and moments, and understanding the forces that shaped her life. Imagine being able to hear her stories told in her own words.

   Now imagine another person, the child of the child of your grandchild, looking at your face gazing out from some family photo. Imagine this future man or woman wondering about you and curious to know you as a person and the story of your life. Wouldn’t that person, the offspring of your offspring, be as interested in you as you are in your ancestors? Wouldn’t all those who follow you want to know the key events of your life, the choices and challenges you faced, the detail of your days, your feelings?

   Of course they would. They come from you. To know you is to know themselves. There’s no greater gift, no more generous legacy, that you could give.

   It’s a gift you give to yourself as well.

   To remember a life is to journey back through time. But unlike time, which always marches forward, memory is free to roam down the corridors of the past. With it you can revisit the events and people and occasions that made a difference. Dwelling in memory on a wonderful moment from your past can be one of life’s great pleasures.

   As you journey back in memory, you’ll see your life whole. What may have felt at the time like a series of disconnected and chance events will take on a flow and coherence that only the passage of time could reveal. You’re able now to see how the consequences of a choice, perhaps made casually, rippled through the years that followed. You can see now how a chance event led to other events that shaped your entire life. Memory, in short, can reveal the links, the connections – the story – of your life.

   It’s hard to exaggerate the satisfaction this kind of insight can produce. It’s the satisfaction of feeling that your life, whatever happened in it, made sense.

   Let the children of your children know you as a person, so they can know themselves. Let them learn from your experience. Let them benefit from what you’ve worked so hard to understand. And, not least, give yourself the satisfaction of seeing your life whole.

   When you’re done with The Legacy Guide and all it guides you to do, you will hold in your hand your own book filled with the facts, memories, stories, people, and feelings that made up every step of your unique journey. You’ll be able to say, “This is what I did. This is what happened to me. This is my story, my legacy.”