Legacy

Is it tragedy or victory that the South Africa white supremacist was murdered yesterday? I'm not sure I have entirely formed an opinion. Tragedy, I suppose, for the fact that this type of killing still occurs. Victory for those who feel vindicated by his death. I could go on at length about the good and bad of this man's death.

But what I really want to write about is that: as I walked along Kapiolani Park listening to the NPR report about this murder, it made me wonder about legacy. This man certainly has one. Albeit negative and filled with hate. He has one. I started to think about what if I'm killed when I go to South Africa in a few months. What would be my legacy? Would I even have one? And if not, do I want one?

I think over the past 31 years (as of tomorrow), I've touched a lot of lives. Good and bad. A lot, a lot, a lot, of lives. Some might say a breadth of lives. But depth? I'm not so sure about that. I've been calling myself a transient for the past few years, and with this transience, obviously, comes an inability to dig deeply into one place, one community, one person's life.

Do I regret my transience? Not quite. I don't think I'd make the trade of having stayed in one place in order to achieve depth over breadth. At least, not in my past. But now, as I think about legacy, I think about how it might be time to consider what depth means to me and if that sense of floating I have isn't tied directly to the fact that I'm not tied directly to something other than my intangible career.

But beyond this pervasive feeling of wandering the planet alone with no real legacy, of which I couldn't possibly write more about, I think about legacy in terms of my immediate behaviors, as well. I don't think I want to be known as the tough girl who bled sarcasm, just as much as Mr. South African racist probably, as he took his last breaths, didn't want to be known as the white supremacist hater. And I think if I was being eulogized, people would focus on my attributes with which I no longer want to be associated.

So the question becomes: who do I want to be remembered as? Is it someone different? No, it's not at all. It's me. It's the me that not too many people are privy to because I've not only had little experience with discovering depth outside myself, but they've had little experience discovering the depth of me. And I write particularly in reference to the depth of my kindness, caring and capacity for love.

I've walked so many streets. Left rugged marks from my soles. But I want to leave the barest of footprints now. That's the legacy I want to leave.