Don’t Forget About Me

I asked myself a question tonight that felt considerably heavier than the Sunday evening required.

How long will I be remembered?

This came after a conversation with my uncle about family history and an ancestor with the spectacular middle name Orator, which sent me down an entirely different rabbit hole about how much of who we are is inherited and how much we intentionally build ourselves.

[That is another story.]

But apparently one existential crisis wasn't enough for the evening, because after wondering about everything that came before me, my brain immediately moved on to:

What happens after me?

Not immediately after me.

I'm hoping everyone has some plans.

I mean eventually.

How long does a person remain?

And almost immediately, I thought about Willie Campbell.

Willie was my husband's grandfather Jerry's very best friend.

And at Jerry's celebration of life, Willie did something Brandon and I still talk about to this day.

He shook everyone's hand.

Not some people's hands.

Everyone's.

And as he moved from person to person, he delivered essentially the same message.

Handshake.

"Don't forget about me."

Next person.

"Don't forget about me."

Next.

"Don't forget about me."

It was so Willie.

And so funny.

There was also a particular order of events planned for the celebration of life.

Dinner would happen. And then, after dinner, people would have an opportunity to share stories about Jerry.

This was announced.

Clearly.

Whether Willie was too hard of hearing to absorb this information, simply couldn't wait, or just didn't give a shit, we will never know.

Because moments after everyone was specifically told that stories would be shared after dinner, Willie's voice came booming through the room:

"Me and Jerry... man, he was the worst golfer."

So much for the program.

And honestly?

Perfect.

Years later, Brandon and I can still hear it.

Don't forget about me.

We laugh every single time.

And tonight, while thinking about how long any of us are actually remembered, something occurred to me.

We didn't forget about Willie.

But not because he told us not to.

That's the funny thing about being remembered.

We don't really get to choose which parts survive.

We can spend our lives carefully constructing an identity.

We can build companies.

Earn titles.

Write books.

Create things.

Win things.

Teach things.

Hang plaques on walls.

Put our names on buildings if things go particularly well.

And someday, the thing somebody remembers about us might be that we absolutely refused to wait until after dinner to tell everyone our best friend sucked at golf.

That's kind of wonderful.

Because Willie wasn't trying to manufacture a legacy in that moment.

He was just being Willie.

He loved Jerry.

He had something to say.

Apparently it needed saying immediately.

And years later, the moment remains.

Not because it was profound.

Not because anyone wrote it down.

Not because it was part of the program.

Actually, it was specifically not part of the program.

It remains because it was human.

And that made me wonder if I've been thinking about legacy all wrong.

When we ask how long we'll be remembered, I think what we're really asking is something much simpler.

Did I matter?

Will somebody know I was here?

Will anything about this enormous, complicated, hilarious, painful, beautiful experience of being me remain after I'm no longer around to explain it?

It's an incredibly human thing to want.

Don't forget about me.

Maybe we don't walk around shaking hands and saying it out loud.

But we say it in other ways.

We take pictures.

We tell stories.

We save things.

We make things.

We put our names on things.

We raise children and teach students and build businesses and write words and plant trees and establish traditions.

Somewhere underneath all of it may be the tiniest request:

Please let some part of this matter after I'm gone.

But I'm beginning to think being remembered is a terrible measurement of whether a life mattered. Because a name and an influence don't necessarily travel together.

Think about how much of you came from people whose names you don't know.

Somebody started the tradition your family still follows.

Somebody taught somebody how to make the thing you eat every Christmas.

Someone used a phrase that got repeated enough times that nobody remembers who said it first.

Someone taught your grandmother something she taught your mother, who taught you.

Someone made somebody feel safe, and that person learned what safety felt like and eventually created it for somebody else.

Someone broke a pattern.

Someone started one.

Someone showed somebody another way.

You don't know all of their names.

But here you are.

Still carrying pieces of them.

The name disappeared.

The thing didn't.

I think about this a lot with my kids.

Parenting is an absolutely bizarre exercise in invisible influence.

You repeat something 4,000 times and receive virtually no indication that anyone has heard a word you've said.

Then one day your child says something to somebody else and your own voice comes flying out of their mouth.

Sometimes this is deeply moving.

Sometimes you think:

Well, shit.

Either way, there you are.

And someday my kids will take things from our home into homes of their own.

Some will be things I intentionally taught them.

But I suspect many won't be.

They'll remember what happened after somebody screwed up.

How we spoke about people who weren't in the room.

Whether we apologized.

What we laughed about.

What we considered important.

How we treated strangers.

Whether they could tell us the truth.

Whether we tried again.

How love felt here.

And eventually they may do something for another person simply because it feels like the obvious thing to do.

They might not think of me at all.

I used to think that sounded a little sad.

Now I think it might be the whole point.

Because that's not forgetting.

That's integration.

Something traveled far enough that it stopped belonging to the person who taught it and became part of the person who received it.

The same thing happens outside our families.

Someone teaches you something.

You use it.

You adapt it.

Eventually you teach it to somebody else.

They use it somewhere you never would have imagined.

It affects someone you've never met.

That person carries some piece of it somewhere else.

And pretty quickly, nobody knows where the first domino stood.

This is particularly interesting to me because I have spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to define exactly what I'm building with MoveMaker.

There are fitness classes.

Stories.

Trainings.

Frameworks.

Workshops.

Human Experience Design.

And approximately nine billion half-developed ideas living in my computer.

But underneath all of it, I think there is one thing I've been trying to do all along:

Create moments that change what happens next.

That's it.

Not control what happens next.

Not tell another person what their next move should be.

Just create something meaningful enough to move something.

A thought.

A conversation.

A behavior.

A relationship.

A person.

Maybe someone reads a story and recognizes something about themselves they couldn't see before.

Maybe an instructor learns to read the room differently and someone in her class feels like they belong.

Maybe somebody hears three words at exactly the right time and repeats them to another person six months later.

Maybe a kid watches an adult apologize and grows up believing that being wrong doesn't have to mean being bad.

Maybe someone laughs at a story about an old man interrupting a funeral program and remembers to call an old friend.

We don't know.

That's the maddening part.

I would actually very much like to know.

I would like an extremely detailed spreadsheet documenting every meaningful ripple I have ever caused.

Column A: Person.

Column B: Thing Lindsay Did.

Column C: Resulting Positive Impact.

Column D: Additional Humans Subsequently Affected.

There would be formulas.

There would be charts.

There would probably be conditional formatting.

Unfortunately, human influence does not provide analytics.

We don't know which conversation somebody will remember.

We don't know which kindness gets repeated.

We don't know which apology changes something.

We don't know which kid was paying attention.

We don't know which sentence sticks.

We don't know which completely ordinary Tuesday becomes part of somebody else's story.

We mostly just keep living them.

Maybe that's why I've become so obsessed with moments.

Because a life is overwhelmingly made of things that do not announce themselves as important.

There is no dramatic music playing when you say something your child will remember for 30 years.

Nobody hands you a certificate when you make another person feel understood.

Your phone does not buzz with a notification:

Congratulations! This interaction will alter three generations of human behavior.

You're just standing in the kitchen.

Driving somebody somewhere.

Teaching a class.

Sending a text.

Sitting beside someone.

Laughing so hard you can't breathe.

Choosing what to say next.

And then the moment ends.

Except sometimes it doesn't.

Sometimes somebody takes a piece of it with them.

And then somebody takes a piece from them.

And off it goes.

So maybe I don't actually want to know how long I'll be remembered.

Maybe I want to know:

How long will something be different because I was here?

And that is a much harder question.

Because there is no way to answer it.

If something I do changes something you do, which changes something somebody else does, which affects how they teach someone, love someone, raise someone or respond to someone—eventually I disappear from the equation.

My name falls off.

And maybe that's not the tragedy.

Maybe that's the goal.

Maybe the best things we create eventually stop needing us.

They become somebody else's language.

Somebody else's instinct.

Somebody else's tradition.

Somebody else's idea.

Somebody else's way of making another human feel understood.

Maybe legacy isn't making something so unmistakably ours that nobody can forget who created it.

Maybe it's making something so useful people keep using it.

So human people recognize themselves in it.

So simple somebody remembers it when they need it.

So good somebody wants to pass it along.

Even after our name falls off.

I don't think I want immortality.

I want continuation.

I want something good to keep moving after I am no longer the person moving it.

Through my children.

Through my work.

Through people I've taught.

Through stories I've told.

Through moments I probably won't even realize mattered.

Maybe it travels ten feet.

Maybe ten years.

Maybe ten generations.

I don't get to control that part.

None of us do.

We get to love people.

Teach things.

Make things.

Screw things up.

Apologize.

Laugh.

Show up.

Try again.

Tell the story before dinner even though somebody very clearly said stories were after dinner.

We get to be here, fully and unmistakably ourselves, and put whatever good we can into motion.

Then eventually our names start falling off.

And somewhere, years later, two people might still be sitting together laughing about the way we shook everybody's hand.

They might repeat something we said.

They might do something differently because we existed.

They might not even realize how much of us they're carrying.

Willie walked around Jerry's celebration of life shaking hands and making one request:

"Don't forget about me."

Willie, we didn't.

And the funniest part is—

you never needed to ask.

Move Like It Matters.