You are what you produce

Every parent knows this: The impact you have on your children is part of your legacy. Indeed: You will often hear parents say things like “my children mean everything to me”.

I do not doubt that.

But turn this question around: What are you to the world?

If you drive a car, then you are a part of global warming. If you buy a piece of plastic, then you are that plastic. If you use electricity that creates nuclear waste, then you are that nuclear waste. This is, of course a very materialistic interpretation.

Turning from materialism to ideas, what ideas do you have?

Do you sit in front of a TV set? If you do, then you are the ideas that come out of the TV set.

Do you read a newspaper? Then you support the ideas shared in that newspaper.

Do you publish your “own” ideas? Then you are, of course, those ideas.

The more time you spend creating your own messages, the more those messages which you alone create become a part of who you are. On the contrary, the more time you spend consuming messages in other media, the more you become those other media.

Unless you actively declare who you are and what you stand for, your legacy will be nothing more and nothing less than the media you have consumed.