What Will You Leave Behind When You’re No Longer Here?
- Bernard Kates
- Jul 29
- 2 min read
"All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances..."
— William Shakespeare, As You Like It

We come and go. We act our part. Some scenes are written for us, others we improvise. But eventually, the curtain falls and someone else steps into the light.
So what remains?
Once you’ve faced the silence, once you’ve accepted that relevance is not something the world gives you but something you live into, you’re left with a deeper, quieter question:
What now?
It’s a question the existentialists understood all too well.
If life has no inherent meaning, then the task falls to us. We are the meaning-makers. The shapers of purpose. The ones who must decide what we stand for, and what we will live, and die, in service of.
Not because it’s easy.
Not because it will always be noticed.
But because, in the end, it’s the only freedom that really matters.
So if your voice still matters, even if fewer people are listening... If your presence still has value, even if the invitations have slowed down... If you still care, still burn with some quiet inner purpose... Then what do you do with it?
That’s the turning point.
Once you reclaim your sense of purpose, not the loud, career-driven kind, but the quietly insistent this is what I’m here for, then you begin to wonder:
What will this purpose leave behind?
Who will it touch?
What will echo once I’m gone?
We don’t get to choose how we’re remembered but we do get to choose how we live, and that choice shapes what we leave behind.
Legacy isn’t a statue or a speech or a name on a building. Legacy is the ripple. The trace of kindness you left in someone’s day. The insight you offered that someone else built upon. The courage you modelled when others were watching, even if they never told you.
So ask yourself:
What am I still here to do?
Who might benefit, even quietly, from what I’ve lived through?
What am I still growing into?
What am I still willing to stand for?
You’re not here to impress. You’re here to express.
You’re not here to chase relevance. You’re here to become resonance.
So that long after you’ve gone, something true still moves through the world because of you.
Life doesn’t come preloaded with meaning, but you can choose to leave behind something meaningful.
That’s legacy.
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