Last Sunday’s sky was heartbreakingly blue. Total reminder of 9/11 for me. How many of us think of that day when we see such crystal, saturated blue skies? As Bruce says, “that same unbelievable blue.”
It got me thinking about legacy: what is the narrative, the final message, that we each leave in the world? Since I am so hopelessly lost professionally, I can only think about my personal legacy. How do I want to be remembered? What do I want my children to extract, most fundamentally, from the way I lived my life? These are big thoughts for days when my spirit is up for them (and today, pouring rain, bleak, dark, is not that day!), but they have been on my mind.
I think what I want is to be remembered as someone who lived with integrity, who lived emotionally honestly, who never shied away from expressing the truest things in her heart, even when they were hard to say. As someone whose belief in peoples’ essential goodness is manifest in high expectations of those who are close to her. As someone who loved a lot of people, a few of them tremendously fiercely. To be remembered as someone who threw herself into this world of ours and tried her best to make it a better place, even if just for one single person. I would also like to sand down my rough edges a little, to be remembered as more loving and accepting, and less caustic. To find that elusive professional or intellectual passion, so I can go from an awkward trot to a graceful canter inside my own head.

“I believe that the details of our lives will be forgotten by most, but the emotion, the spirit, will linger with those who shared it, and be part of them forever.” – Liv Ullmann