What Kind of Emotional Inheritance Do You Want to Leave for Your Children and Your Children’s Children?
There are many ways in which the legacy you leave for the future can have an enduring positive effect on communities decades and even centuries away, just like planting trees that one day the children of the future will be able to sit under and enjoy. The legacy we are discussing here is the social, familial and emotional impact of your life upon the upcoming generations.
You are the link between your ancestors and the future. You will be an ancestor in the future. Today we understand how the timeless processes of including and honouring the ancestors that happen in indigenous communities across the world help to maintain a vital link between the living and the departed ones who belong to one’s own lineage and traditions.
In Western societies, we lost the significance of this long ago, but we now know that this is far more valuable than we realised. We need to create fresh, contemporary ways to keep these links between the past and the future alive in ways that can nourish and inspire future generations.
Creating a treasured, curated document and story of your life is one way to do this. This is an actual physical repository of all that you hold dear, that can pass into the hands of your loved ones for safekeeping. It needs to be prepared with skill, care and love, and to be an item that will be honoured and respected for all the life experience, information and wisdom that it contains.
Sometimes the young people do not know the questions to ask you, or they do not realise the significance of information about their ancestors that will be lost if it is not recorded. Here is an opportunity to create a permanent, visible connection between all the generations in your family that you can remember, and all who come after you.
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