Legend has it that in ancient Rome, when a victorious general paraded through the streets, he was sometimes trailed by a servant whose job it was to repeat to him, “Memento mori” {Remember you will die}.  This reminder of mortality served as a friendly reminder to the hero to stay humble as he graced the people with his presence.  Instilling humility was the servant’s message, but perhaps the grander objective was to keep one eye on his master’s legacy.

Your legacy is a self-portrait, the signature of your life’s presence. It’s the essence of who you are, and what you leave behind and, yet, most of us don’t thoughtfully consider this most sacred cornerstone of our lives until it is far too late.  Often, it is only when we start thinking of our mortality do we contemplate defining our legacy.  Society does not deem it polite to mention death in conversation and we often even deny ourselves from thinking about it due to stigma, despite its inevitability.  If no one is comfortable discussing this topic – including our own inner voice – focusing on defining one’s legacy becomes a daunting task.

So here’s my newsflash: you are going to die.  In fact, everyone you know some day will die.  With that awkward, morbid statement out in the open and the inevitable cloak of invincibility removed, we can now channel our energy on creating legacy.  Ask yourself what would you most regret not doing if you were on your deathbed?  What marker(s) have you set, what footprint do you want to leave behind that best defines you? There is no one correct answer and, indeed, there may be several both tangible and intangible.

Consider Steve Jobs: the tangible legacy is obvious as we all obsessively carry iPhones as he transformed several industries including the smartphone, music and how we access the internet.  But his intangible legacy of being a brilliant innovator that brutally crushed any opposition with a Machiavellian approach is just as powerful as his iPhone. It’s a brilliant legacy on so many dimensions as he was such a polarizing personality – he was voted worst CEO to work for several years in a row as he was so demanding. Of course, none of us may ever achieve these extraordinary achievements, but looking through the lens of a genius and how he left his mark in history can help guide each of us on a much smaller scale.  However we each choose to live our unique existence is a personal decision: what we create, how we treat people, how we will be remembered.  The personal awareness of this examination typically arrives as we approach retirement and/or the end of life but shouldn’t necessarily be as we should be cognizant of our life path early on in life and how it will define us.

Take some time to reflect in the context of your own tangible and intangible legacy.  What will you leave behind, how will you be remembered, whose lives have you deeply touched?  Deep introspection may offer you a guide path on how you choose to live out the rest of your life.  It is never too early to ponder these life goals; after all, memento mori.