Legacy

 Legacy

I’ve been thinking about legacy lately.

Not the kind people write in history or etch in stone. Not the kind with accolades or followers. I’m talking about the quiet kind. The kind you carry without even realizing it. The kind that lives in your soul, tucked into your breath, showing up in how you comfort a child, how you make your morning tea , how you greet the morning.

Legacy is energy. It’s memory. It’s sacred repetition.

It’s not what we leave behind so much as what we live into.

When I was younger, I thought legacy had to be big to be real. I was so sure that the only way to honor my father, or myself, was through something profound and permanent. A published book. A successful practice. A visible, verifiable impact.

But now, at fifty, I know better. Now I understand that legacy is not always loud. Sometimes it’s the whisper you follow when you’re lost. It’s the invisible thread that holds a family together, generation after generation, even through rupture and silence.

My father, Swami Hari Har Das, left behind books and students and sacred teachings. But what lives in me isn’t found in the pages of his work, it’s in the way he used to sit quietly before speaking. The way he insisted on beginning with breath. The way he believed food was a form of devotion and digestion was a fire to be tended. It’s in the oil I rub into my skin before bed. The mantras that rise in my mind when I’m tired or scared. The scent of incense on a summer night.

He also left behind pain. And confusion. And absences I still don’t know how to fill.

And maybe that, too, is part of legacy, learning what to release, what to forgive, what to carry forward in a new way.

I used to want to be just like him. Then I wanted to be nothing like him. Now I just want to be whole. Which means taking what’s true, and letting go of what never was.

Legacy is not about perfection. It’s about presence.

It’s not about never falling. It’s about rising again, with grace.

Now, when I teach, or write, or sit with someone in ceremony, I know I am part of a much larger story. I am one voice in a lineage. One prayer in a long echo. I am both the ancestor and the descendant. The teacher and the student. The medicine and the wound.

And when I think about my son, his eyes, his strength, the way he laughs like my father did, I wonder what he’ll carry forward. Not just from me, but through me. I wonder what stories his hands will remember. What rituals he’ll create in his own time. What parts of my legacy will live in his breath.

If I have any say in it, I hope my legacy is this:

That I loved with a wide open heart, even when it hurt.

That I told the truth, even when it shook my voice.

That I laughed, danced, fasted, prayed, and lived like life was a temple.

That I didn’t keep wisdom but offered it freely.

That I stayed soft when life tried to harden me.

That I kept the sacred fire alive, and taught others how to find their own.

Because at the end of the day, legacy isn’t what happens when we’re gone.

Legacy is how we show up while we’re still here.

~Shanti Freedom Das