Your Legacy is Now
Life is not a search for meaning from others, it’s about the creation of meaning for yourself.
For over 30 years Alan Weiss has consulted, coached, and advised everyone from Fortune 500 executives, state governors, non-profit directors, and entrepreneurs to athletes, entertainers, and beauty pageant contestants. That’s quite an assortment of people, and they run into the thousands. Most of them have had what we euphemistically call “means,” and some of them have had a lot more than that. Others have been aspiring and with more ends in sight than means on hand.
Alan Weiss states:
I’ve dealt with esteem (low), narcissism (high), family problems, leadership dysfunctions, insecurities, addictions, and ethical quandaries. And I’ve talked about them through the coronavirus crisis. But don’t get the wrong idea. About 95% of these people have been well-meaning, honest (to the best of their knowledge), and interested in becoming a better person and better professional. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be talking to me.
I found the equivalent of the “runner’s wall” in their journeys, where they must break through the pain and the obstacles and then can keep going with renewed energy and spirit. But runners know how far they must go after the breakthrough, be it another half lap or another five miles. There is a finish line.
I’ve found that people in all positions, even after the “breakthrough,” don’t know where they are in the race, let alone where the finish line is.
They do not know what meaning is for them. They may have money in the bank, good relationships, the admiration of others, and the love of their dogs. But they have no metrics for “What now?” They believe that at the end of life there is a tallying, some metaphysical accountant who totals up their contributions, deducts their bad acts, and creates the (hopefully positive) difference.
That difference, they believe, is their “legacy.”
But the thought that legacy arrives at the end of life is as ridiculous as someone who decides to sell a business and tries to increase its valuation the day prior. Legacy is now. Legacy is daily. Every day we create the next page in our lives, but the question becomes who is writing it and what’s being written. Is someone else creating our legacy? Or are we, ourselves, simply writing the same page repeatedly?
Or do we leave it blank?
Our organic, living legacy is marred and squeezed by huge normative pressures. There is a “threshold” point, at which one’s beliefs and values are overridden by immense peer pressure. Our metrics are forced to change.
In an age of social media, biased press, and bullying, we’ve come to a point where our legacy, ironically, is almost out of our hands.
Yet our “meaning”—our creation of meaning and not a search for some illusive alchemy—creates worth and impact for us and all those with whom we interact.
Arnie Howes
I work for the largest utility in the U.S. and can tell you that the electric companies would certainly like to do such a thing. But…there isn’t a business case for it yet or they would have done it.
I’m not a budgeting or rate case expert by any means, but I do know that such a large (preventive) cost would likely involve a rate increase that would have to be approved by commissions. Rate commissions always balk at capital expenditures that are not urgent due to pressure from consumer groups.
You and I both know preventive is better than contingent, but in this case the politics and initial cost of the matter combined cause it to be a less attractive option.
And I agree with your assessment of the restoration of power. Line workers often endure severe conditions to restore power. People should buy them coffee rather than chastising them for working only two or three days without rest…
Alan Weiss
The business case is simple: X number of storms will be more expensive than the investment in burying lines. And all power companies need to be run far better. Their default is to simply pass on costs to customers, but never savings. Public utility commissions are no better.
Sten Vesterli
There was an interesting study on the blackouts after the pre-Halloween snowstorm some years ago. It showed that customers of public utilities suffered fewer blackouts than customers of private utilities. The reason was that the public utilities took preventive action (cutting trees next to power lines) while the private utilities didn’t. The ROI showed the private companies right (it was cheaper to restore than to prevent), but the customers of the public companies were happier.
Alan Weiss
It’s snowing heavily again here as I write this. (Global warming, anyone?) The ultimate preventive is to take lines out of harm’s way, which is also the aesthetic solution. You can’t denude the surroundings of trees, and many very healthy ones that no one would have pruned were toppled in the last storm, as more will be today.