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Screw Legacy — That’s for Other People

Live your life for you, not for people thousands of years from now.

Devin Mehra
2 min readJan 2, 2024
Photo by Laura Fuhrman on Unsplash

People love to talk about what their legacy will be.

If I achieve X, Y, and Z, I will leave a lasting legacy for those who come after me.

To be clear, I am all about impacting the lives of others and leaving this world a better place than one found it.

But this obsession with legacy I can’t quite wrap my mind around. There’s an obsession with how people will remember us after we’re gone.

While it’s important to leave an indelible mark on those who knew us personally, this notion that our legacy will somehow change the outlook of our own lives is insane.

Here’s the truth:

Legacy is for others

People construct their lives to build a lasting legacy, but in the process many of these same people become miserable. They are worried about what people generations from now will think after they are gone.

Legacy can become more important than living the life you’re supposed to live. Legacy can make us act like monsters towards the people in our own lives just to be respected by people we’ll never know or meet.

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Devin Mehra
Devin Mehra

Written by Devin Mehra

Fascinated with social dynamics. Subscribe to my monthly emotional intelligence newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/9f4b3a410509/10freekeypoints

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