We will all leave this world, but what we leave behind is up to us.

This piece will be brief. Our time here is short.

I don’t mean to sound morbid. The ancients taught that remembrance of death was essential to living life more fully. Memento mori.

The knowledge that with each passing day, you’ve one less day on this Earth should spur you into action. Those projects you’d delayed, those people you’d neglected… when, if not now?

Yet our time will come. Much of our hard work will come undone.

What will remain is the trace we’ve left on the people and places we’ve known. For some, it will linger like the fragrance of your beloved’s favourite perfume. For others, it will reek of such a stench that they’ll want to wash out every last trace of you.

Naming our children and our institutions after a noteworthy ancestor is like trying to preserve something of their fragrance.

How will you be remembered? It will depend on how you’ve lived, and what you give of your heart, of your mind, and of your time.

While death is the final departure, our lives are filled with departures, just at they’re filled with arrivals. You never know when you’ll see that old friend for the last time, nor when your child will stop asking for a piggyback ride.

Cherish the people in your life. Try to leave a place cleaner than you found it, to leave another person more content that you found them, to leave a trace of goodness like a fragrance in your wake.

Your children will imitate you. Leave them a legacy worthy of imitation.