A life, hidden.
When I was young, I had a step-grandfather who worked as a funeral director and I would occasionally visit his parlour. I often watched him and others engrave names onto plaques that would go on top of the coffin lid. I later realised that they were made for people who had passed away.
Growing up, I didn’t fully understand death. I remember attending funerals, seeing bodies lying in their coffins and thinking they must be going for a very long sleep. It wasn’t that I wanted to die but I didn’t fear death. If anything, what made me uneasy or fearful wasn’t death itself but the atmosphere at funerals. Seeing people cry, hearing them sing with sadness and listening to heartfelt stories made me realise how real and significant death is.
This is when I started to think about my life and what I wanted to do before it was done. Now I won’t lie, as a kid all I wanted was a lot of money, so I could buy and do anything that I wanted. I also had this underlying desire to be someone who did something significant, so when people attended my funeral they spoke about the great things I had done.
Eventually, I came across the idea of having a legacy and I thought, "That's what I want to build."
What is a legacy?
A legacy is what you leave behind for others. Whether through your actions, ideas, contributions or the impact you’ve had on people. It’s how you are remembered and what continues to exist because of your influence.
End of last year, I did some deep diving around my legacy and what I want to leave behind and I found that there were different types of legacies. For most of my life I was driven by the idea of having, what they call a, Ripple Legacy.
A Ripple Legacy is about creating an impact that extends far beyond your immediate reach. Like a stone dropped into water, what you do goes beyond those around you to helping people from all corners of the world to future generations.
In a social media-driven world, significance is measured by the number of followers one has. For those driven by creating a Ripple Legacy, significance is measured by the amount of lives you’ve been able to help.
This version of legacy creates a subtle but powerful pressure: to do more, to be more, to leave behind something monumental. However, I’ve discovered, especially now as a father, that’s not what I want to do anymore.
The Trap of Self-Importance
The pursuit of a Ripple Legacy can easily become a pursuit of self-importance. We chase impact, influence and recognition, measuring success by how wide our ripples extend. It makes legacy about us and not about the people we claim to serve. It fuels an endless cycle of striving, where we chase validation in the form of admiration and remembrance.
Now I believe we are all self interested. So no matter what we do in life, we do everything with ourselves in mind. However, we have a choice to decide if we want to be more selfish or selfless which I believe a legacy should in itself be a selfless endeavour.
So I did some further digging and discovered that I’m more interested in the concept of Stewardship Legacy which is about responsibly managing and nurturing the people, resources and opportunities entrusted to you.
Instead of focusing on how many people my actions influence, I’m thinking about who I am truly responsible for. Rather than trying to create waves that reach distant shores, I’m focusing on stewarding what’s directly in front of me.
Moving From Ripple Legacy to Stewardship
If you want to transition from chasing influence to building meaningful stewardship, here’s how:
1. Redefine Success – Instead of asking, How many people can I impact?, ask Who am I responsible for? Prioritise depth over breadth. Don’t mistake being responsible for someone as permission to control someone’s life. Responsibility is doing right by them, not wanting what you want for them.
2. Invest in Your People – Legacy doesn’t have to be about numbers; it’s can be about relationships. I’m choosing to focus on people who are around me and see value in me supporting them. That’s not to say your people have to be just those your related to but it’s not focussing on the amount of people you want to help.
3. Live Your Values Daily – Stewardship isn’t about a final act of greatness; it’s about consistent action over a lifetime. Teach through how you live, not just what you accomplish.
4. Let Go of Public Validation – A great legacy isn’t built for applause. Be at peace with the idea that your most important impact may never be widely known.
5. Be Present, Not Just Productive – Your legacy isn’t just what you create; it’s how you make people feel. Show up for your people, not just for your projects.
Legacy Is Personal, Not Public
We live in age where getting attention is the name of the game. I’m a big fan of building in public and if leveraged properly, attention can help make a lot of impact and money. However, the pursuit that I’m talking about is realising that some of the most significant things we achieve may only be seen by a few.
I like this excerpt from George Elliot:
“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
I’m not saying you should not be heard, that you should not tell the world who you are, that you should not stand up for what you believe in, those all matter. What I’m saying is that recognition and admiration doesn’t have to be the goal and realising that all who needs to know, of what you’re done is - you and those you choose to be for.
At the end of my life, it won’t be all the strangers I’ve helped who define my legacy. It will be my kids, my family, and those closest to me who will tell the world who I was. And if they don’t, that’s okay too.
Unvisited funerals and forgotten tombs don’t mean a life was unlived or unworthy. Some of the greatest legacies exist not in remembrance, but in the quiet ways a life was fully lived. It is enough that you were here, that you gave what you could and that those who truly mattered knew who you were even if no one else ever does.