This is yet another unplanned post.
About a week and a half ago, I was shaken by the death of someone I knew. Doug was the well-loved leader of a department that I worked in for many years. He was only 63 when he died suddenly.
His death made me thoughtful. Of course, I thought about the things one usually does when someone dies. I thought about how important it is to say things like “I love you” and “thank you” before we lose that opportunity. I thought about how you shouldn’t put everything off for an imaginary golden future, like retirement, because that day may never come.
Grandma, I Want to Be Just Like You
I also thought about the year I lost all three of my grandparents, one after another. (I’d never known the fourth.) The last death — the death of a grandmother — hit me the hardest. I found myself yearning to be like her. Although there were many qualities I admired about her, I latched onto her elegance, perhaps because it is one of the ways I am least like her. For several months, I tried to become a more elegant person… but there was a problem. I was trying to become someone I’m really not.
Had Grandma been able to talk with me, I don’t think she would have wanted me to honor her like that. There were so many things about her that were far more important. She was a dedicated volunteer. She loved her grandchildren fiercely, and she let us know it. She was a good friend. She was a woman of faith. Her elegance fascinated me, but it paled in comparison to the qualities of her heart.
Letting Doug Teach Me How to Lead
As my former coworkers shared their memories of Doug online, I reflected on his leadership. I also thought about my own supervisory role and asked myself, “How can I be more like Doug?”
Doug was great about recognizing good work. He would write a note to the person or team he was praising and to their supervisors. He’d post a copy of the note on a bulletin board in our conference room. Celebration and togetherness were important to him. We had an annual off-site retreat that was a combination of work and fun. We celebrated birthdays and had an off-site Christmas party. These said a lot about how he thought of us as a sort of family. But he didn’t ask us to spend so much time in the office that we sacrificed our relationships outside of work. Work was not a substitute family. It was an additional family.
I’m very different from Doug. I cannot be just like him anymore than I could be just like my grandma. But I can think of what we all admired about him and try to carry that spirit into my own supervisory role.
Our Lives Are Our Legacies
How do you want to be remembered? How do you want people to honor you? What sort of legacy do you want to leave?
Few of us will be able to leave large gifts of money. And of those gifts that we leave behind, some will create ripples of long-lasting good (think of gifts that help preserve wilderness areas or that establish college scholarships), but others will stand for a while and then fade away. Colleges really do need to replace old, out-dated buildings, but someday the new buildings also will need to be replaced.
Few of us will do great things. We may admire the people who change the world, but most of us will effect change on a much smaller scale.
Few of us will leave behind works of art or inventions that will touch lives for generations to come.
Instead, our very lives must be our legacies. We need to live in such a way that we inspire others to imitate our best qualities.
I believe that if we could speak to our departed loved ones and tell them that they inspired us to be better people, they would feel like we had honored them in the best way possible.
When someone dies, we express our love and our grief in all sorts of ways. We decorate graves. We light candles. We make donations in their names. We hang on to mementos.
None of these things are bad. Making a donation is quite good. But one of the best ways we can honor those who have gone before us is to learn from them. We don’t need to try to become someone we are not, but we can think of what we most admire about others and how we might express those virtues in our own lives. Perhaps someday someone who reports to a person you mentored will say, “I love the way my boss shows how much she appreciates people. I want to be like that.” They may never know you or the person who inspired you, but the legacy will live on.