Legacy Thoughts | Episode 467 | What Will People Remember?

Legacy Thoughts | Episode 467 | What Will People Remember?

Someday, a whole life gets squeezed into a few paragraphs and that fact can either haunt you or wake you up. We sit with that uncomfortable truth and talk about legacy in a way that has nothing to do with fame, mansions, or money, and everything to do with time, choices, and the people we touch along the way.

A simple scene from a family movie sparks the core metaphor: exhibits come alive, but if they don’t make it back before morning, they turn to dust. It’s a surprisingly sharp reminder that we don’t control the clock, and we don’t always get a warning. From there, we reflect on how easy it is to stop dreaming after setbacks, criticism, or being told our voice doesn’t matter and why perseverance, patience, and self-belief are still possible even after long detours.

We also talk about grief and the surreal experience of trying to find the “right words” when someone passes, including what it feels like to build an obituary while you’re still processing the loss. That leads to the most important question: what do you want people to remember you for? For us, it comes back to service, mental health honesty, and the hope that helping one person can ripple outward into a legacy that continues through them.

If this resonates, subscribe to Voices For Voices, share this with someone you care about, and leave a review. What do you want your legacy to be?

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Chapter Markers

• 0:00 - Welcome And Why We’re Here
• 1:24 - Legacy And How Short Life Is
• 3:43 - A Museum Story About Turning To Dust
• 7:53 - What Will People Remember About Us
• 13:59 - Obituaries And Losing A Parent
• 17:12 - Wanting To Be Remembered For Help
• 22:05 - Beyond Money: A Legacy Anyone Can Leave
• 26:04 - Put It In Writing Before It’s Late

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Transcript

Welcome And Why We’re Here

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes 0:03

Hey everyone, thank you for joining this Instagram live. Trying it a little bit different. So thank you for for joining us today, tonight, in the morning, afternoon. Just thank you for for joining us. It's a pleasure to be able to come into uh your lives uh wherever you may be. So thank you for for being here with us. Thank you for uh all the time. Doesn't have to be a lot of time. It can be just a little bit of time where we can where we can talk, where we can be transparent, where we can talk about the hard topics, where we can talk about the easy topics. And in this particular Instagram live, we're going to uh we're gonna get into a little bit about uh legacy and what it means to me, to us, uh, and how short a time our short a time our time is on earth. Right? We speaking from experience, we grow up as we're growing up, you know it's it's to me against the world. I can do anything. I can dream, I can go after those dreams. For some of us, we can continue those dreams even with a a pause, even with reaching a hurdle, a roadblock that uh that we we may encounter. Others we may just stop dreaming because of setbacks, because of being told we're not good enough, told that our opinion doesn't matter. And first and foremost, I'm here to say your opinion and your thoughts do matter, and that's our dog in the background. So if you do hear a dog growling, she's playing with her uh playing with one of her toys. Uh her lamb is uh that she's playing with trying to get the squeak. But uh so yeah, you do matter. Your opinion, opinions do matter. It's easy, again, it's easy to stop, it's easy to say, alright, I gave it my best shot, and now I gotta find something different to do. And I'm here to say with conviction that you're the one that decides when chasing that dream, following that dream ends. Yes, and maybe put on hold for a time. But one thing I've I guess learned throughout the years, including the over four hundred and sixty-four episodes, I believe, of our Voices for Voices TV show and podcast has taught me is patience, perseverance is hard. It's very hard. Like, man, or woman, wish I could do this thing. And wish I could do that thing. And I guess it really doesn't matter why it this comes up now. Uh it really doesn't. So one of my child movies we we watch recently has something to do with a museum. I don't want to be given not I'm not here promoting any anything, any movie. But this particular show, one of the one of the parts was a certain part of the day there would be at this museum, the exhibits would come to life. The Tyrannosaurus Rex, all the others would come to life. And if they went outside of the museum and they weren't back inside the museum by, I guess, open time, then these individuals will just turn to dust. And that would be the end of those particular exhibits or exhibit or part of the exhibit. No questions asked. That was that was just the way things were. And we got to talking about legacy. What do we want to be remembered as if somebody looks back in 30, 40, 50, 60 years, if they even remember us? Because there's even presidents of the United States, and even really powerful people who have come and gone. And in their in their time here on earth, it was thought of these people are consequential to a particular field, a particular sport, a particular thing. And as the years go by, so do even even the memories, some of them. And so for me, not being a consequential person, I just got to thinking about a legacy. How do I want to be remembered? Not in the morbid sense, but just in the sense of people aren't gonna remember every single thing, accomplishment. We know we can't take things with us material things. And so I I just got the thinking how do we want to be remembered? And so I'd asked uh this other person question, and we were going they were going through their like wow, because it's it's just an interesting question of here we are on earth today, we don't know if we're gonna be on earth tomorrow. We don't know what what what's gonna happen, when it's gonna happen. For me, I'm a believer, so I believe that God has that mapped out. And so I just wonder what you're thinking about for your legacy. That what do you want people to remember you by or as? That there's I don't know, a sentence or two, or words, or maybe a professional athlete, or I d I don't know. Then all these accomplishments, all these things that we've done, all go into what? That when we're gone from this earth, it goes into maybe maybe two, three, four paragraphs called our obituary. Some people write their own ahead of time because they they want to be particular and they want certain things. Uh, I recently saw a Facebook post was an obituary, so much as just, you know, hey, if you're reading this, you know, I've I've taken my last breaths. And so the more you know, the older we get, the more unfortunately, people pass from this earth, and people that are close, not close, family members, parents, other loved ones, and and it's just so incredibly interesting to think about. Hi, Lucy. So Lucy's making her Okay, yep. Thank you, thank you. Please don't lick, please don't lick my ear, Lucy. Lucy, Lucy, Lucy, thank you. Okay, so she she definitely wanted to be on the trail. We heard her when I would call her. Okay, okay, okay, thank you. Can we just can we just hang out? So thank you. So here she is, just chewing away on my finger. Okay, let's see. Please, please sit, please sit, please sit, please sit, please sit, thank you. And thank you. And so it to think about for for me in in my early earlier days before the mental health and the mental illnesses really took a hold in me. Uh I I don't know what I would have said. And I and I still don't know what I'm I would say. But part of me is like, yeah, like I maybe I do want to put some things down because like it or not, some of the last things anybody's gonna remember about us. And so do we you know, do we want to control it, or do we want to control it in some sense? Or do we want to wait until you know the rest of their loved ones are at the funeral home and you know you're typing it up on the screen? I mean, having gone through that with my dad passing, it that just the whole process is so surreal when you're sitting there with a funeral director. And you're literally trying to think of the words. Think of the things, think of the people that your loved ones, or someone you you knew was close to and would want to be want to be remembered by. I kind of wrestle with you know the the term legacy and and myself, and so sometimes during shows, on screen, off-screen, just in conversation, it'll just come off. And a lot of times it won't say, I want my legacy to be XYZ. We'll just talk about things that meant a lot that we hope are yeah, hope we're remembered by one particular thing or two particular things. And recently had a conversation with this individual, and it it it really came about or there was like I I just one of the one of the big the big areas was I I just want to be known like that I you know that I helped people and I can't think of I'm getting like I'm getting chills just you know talking through this. And I kind of think that would might be one thing that I would want to say or want to be in my obituary somewhere. The good stuff. The good stuff. Not the times when I abandoned people, when I was too caught up in myself for far too long, but that I was able somehow, some way to help help somebody. Because in that way I'll at least have that parting thought and feeling that if I help somebody that somebody may still be living, and so they may help somebody themselves, and then my legacy would continue further. But in the end, what what what do we Here comes Lucy? Okay, tongue and a mouth. Okay, here, belly rub. There we go. Um and so just sometimes I don't know what it is about. The the uh the liking what's going on. Um so I just wanted to talk through that tonight to everyone who's watching, listening, wherever you may be. Doesn't matter where. Um if somebody is sharing this with you, um maybe you can think about you know your your legacy and what what you might hope and think about eyes watering too. So I have everything. Got a got the got the dog, got the eyes watering, I got everything. And just think about what do we want our legacies to be. And again, it doesn't have to be, you know, I thought that when I first heard the word legacy, I first thought that it was only people who had all this money and had a huge estate and mansions and all kinds it that that was originally what came to mind years ago when I first started putting legacy um into focus for me. But it it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter how much we have, how much we don't have. Again, we can't take any of it with us. It's unfortunate. Here's Lucy again, she's playing another chew toy. Uh and so we can't take it with us, no matter how much or how little. And so it's why I think I've I've tried to at least align my trajectory with just helping people, trying to, trying to find a way to help someone somewhere at some time. Cause it doesn't matter what clothes I'm wearing, doesn't matter what kind of shoes I'm wearing, that doesn't Car and drive in, none of that matters at that point. And so I would I would say in closing that maybe we just think about our legacies and what they mean to us, what we may what we may hope that others remember us by. And we can go from there. So referring back to that movie, they're outside when the morning comes, they may turn to dust. And at one one time or another, uh, depending on how we choose and all those things. Do we want to put words to paper or fingers to paper typing some ideas? Because at the end, you and I, and all of us, are going to be reduced, not just as individuals, you know, being being buried, cremated, traditional burial. We're going to be reduced to three or four paragraphs. That that just kind of eats at me. And so that to me just shows me that I have more work to do as a person, as a human, as an individual. I don't know that anybody is ready to pass on from this life. So I think we continue living, we continue living. And my hope, my wish for you, for everybody is that you're able to have a legacy that you're happy with, and that you've shared it with people, and you've shared what they've meant to you, and what you hope to have meant to them. Because again, I think about the expiration date with food. Our bodies are going to expire at some point in time, one way or another. So again, my wish is that you live the life that you want. You share your thoughts and feelings with them before it gets to be too late. I just want to thank you again for being part of Voices for Voices for this ride. We're going to continue it as long as we can. And you're more than welcome to join us. So if you can give us a thumbs up, like, follow, subscribe, share. That'd be awesome. Follow our socials, obviously, here on Instagram and elsewhere. And we're trying to help and reach at least three billion people over the course of my lifetime and beyond. We're well on our way to doing that because of people just like you. Just like you. So thank you very much, and we'll see you on our next episode. Take care. Let's celebrate the voices in all of us, and let's be a voice for ourselves and those in need. Bye bye for now.