I think about death maybe more than the average person.  Maybe more than the above-average person. That probably sounds dark and a little odd to admit.  I don’t say it to shock anyone or even seek out that all-mighty “click” on the algorithm.  I say it because in 2020 I coded twice during childbirth (multiple system shut down, including cardiac arrest).  That experience, as anyone can imagine, has been quietly running underneath every decision I’ve made and basically every thought I have had ever since.

While I won’t share the story here, yet, I want to say, first and foremost, I am so grateful to be alive and that I get to live this life, no matter how messy it can be; and, secondly, I can tell you what came out the other side of it: I stopped caring about most of the things I used to think mattered, and I started caring much more about things that probably actually matter (at least in my mind and from my experience): What am I leaving behind? What meaning does my life have?  How am I leaving people and this planet better than I found it?

Not money. Not a fancy house or car.  Not a title on a business card. Not political affiliation or even which church was attended.  Not a highlight reel of accomplishments nobody will remember by the time my grandchildren are grown. I mean the real inheritance.  The stuff that outlives me in the people who come after. My son. Someday, maybe, his kids and their kids. My nieces and nephews, future great-nieces and great-nephews.  My friends’ kiddos.  My extended family.  My community.

I want to be a good ancestor. I know that isn’t the way that many people talk or think, but it matters.  What do you know about your ancestors?  What did they do well?  Bad?  How did they influence your family or your world?  I have been participating in an integration lab through the Pocket Project (great organization to check out), and we have been working on how our ancestry affects us, how our lineage gives us gifts and burdens. Not “did I succeed,” or ” was I impressive,” or “did I have so many followers,” but: when the people who come after me think of me, what will they actually have because I existed? Were they safer? Happier? Did they inherit a body of work, a way of thinking, a home, a planet, a set of relationships that gave them more room to breathe than I had?

That question has made me look really hard at how I’m spending my one, short, un-refundable life in this body and on this timeline.  And it’s made me look really hard at the world that we’re not only allowing for ourselves, but also the one our children and their children are going to inherit, because a legacy isn’t just what you hand down within your own family. It’s the whole world you leave the door open to.

And honestly, when I look at that world right now, I get uneasy.  And by uneasy, I mean I want to cry and scream and run away all at the same time. Not because people disagree.  Disagreement is fine, disagreement is human, it’s probably always existed and always will. What worries me is how much of what we call “disagreement” today isn’t disagreement at all. It’s manufactured. Somebody, somewhere, benefits from you and your neighbor hating each other over things you probably agree on more than you think.  What also worries me is how disconnected we are from ourselves, from each other, from the planet and our lifeforce.  It is so easy to get sucked into a screen and blindly believe what the algorithms feed us, but it doesn’t make it true; it doesn’t make it fair; it doesn’t make it supportive of goodwill; nor is it beneficial to all involved (thank you, Rotary, for this great ethical test).

I see it constantly.  If you are paying attention, so do you.  How much of what fills our feeds, our group chats, and our news is built to make us angry first and informed second, if at all? Propaganda used to look like posters and radio broadcasts. Now it looks like a video that confirms exactly what you already believed, delivered by an algorithm that has learned your buttons better than your own family has.  But just because a belief exists doesn’t make it a fact.  And just because someone feels something strongly doesn’t make it fair or right or beneficial to the good of all.  That’s a tough one.

If I want to leave something good behind, I can’t ignore that. If you want to leave something good behind, you can’t ignore that.  The world my kid inherits isn’t separate from this. The health of the planet, the stability of the community he grows up in, whether people can still sit at a table with someone who votes differently and find their shared humanity- that’s inheritance too. That’s as real as any house or savings account or fancy shmancy job or following.

But I don’t want this to turn into a soapbox on media literacy, because that’s not actually the point, and I can feel this piece wanting to go there. The point is bigger than any one algorithm or platform. The point is what kind of people we’re becoming while we’re glued to those screens, and what kind of people we’re modeling for the ones coming up behind us.

Learning to actually evaluate what we’re being fed is part of being a good ancestor, not the whole job. Not teaching my kid what to think.  I have zero interest in raising someone who just parrots my opinions back at me. Teaching him how to think. How to notice when something is built to make you feel instead of built to help you understand. How to ask who benefits from you believing this. How to sit with topics and opinions and events and ideas instead of grabbing the nearest simple answer, because simple answers feel so good when the world feels this unstable.  Especially when we personally align with them.

That’s healing work too, as far as I’m concerned. A dysregulated nervous system is an easy target. Fear sells. Outrage sells. A calm, grounded person is a lot harder to manipulate than a scared one. So when I think about healing — mine, my clients’, my community’s — I don’t think of it as separate from any of this. A less reactive, more regulated world is its own kind of inheritance.

But underneath all of that is a bigger question I haven’t been able to shake since 2020: does any of this actually matter?

Does the earth matter? Maybe we don’t think about it so concretely.  Maybe we haven’t really thought about it at all. I think it’s the most practical question there is. Of course it matters. It’s the only place any of these future kids get to live. Every choice that trades a healthy planet for a good quarterly earnings report is a choice made at someone else’s expense, someone who isn’t even born yet, who never got a vote.

Is there something after this life? I don’t know for certain even though I have my own thoughts after my experience (and not because of what someone else taught me or told me was correct). Nobody does, no matter how confidently they say otherwise, on either side of that argument. But whatever happened to me on that table changed the shape of that question for me permanently. I came back with a very stubborn sense that we are more connected to each other, and to whatever comes next, than our regular daily lives make it feel like. That we’re not as separate from each other, from this planet, from whatever came before us and whatever comes after, as we act like we are.

That sense is a big part of why any of this matters so much to me now. If some part of us continues on, I want to have left something worth continuing from. And if this really is all there is, then it matters even more, because this is the only shot (maybe) I get to make it count.

As I said, I think about this a lot, and when I do, I always come back to the same thoughts. I don’t need to be remembered as impressive. I don’t need a following, a legacy plaque, or my name on a building. I just want to have been a good ancestor. Kindness that outlasts me. A little more health, a little more happiness, a little more opportunity handed down to the kids who come after me than what I was handed.

A world they can actually think clearly in, feel safe in, and breathe in, instead of one more voice screaming at them to pick a side.

That’s the whole plan, really. Be a good ancestor. Everything else is details.

I giggled as I wrote this.  Not a “ha ha” giggle but more of a “I hope they heal” giggle.  In the last 5.5 years since my near-death experience, I have found a sense of peace around what my role on this planet is. It is still an ongoing exploration, but I feel like I am on the right path.  I have changed opinions.  I have just changed in general.  I have formed some much-needed boundaries that protect not only my energy but also my peace and healing.  I have stepped back from some people, lost others, grieved, and had moments when I felt like maybe I should just keep “following the crowd.”  As I have worked on connecting, I have found it interesting how disconnected from humanity so many have become.  So consumed by the lines drawn in the sand as to how someone should look, live, and love.  One of the biggest pieces of healing I have found, and I have spoken of this before, is that when people work toward healing, they gradually quit worrying about what they perceive other people to be doing right or wrong.  They don’t care how they look, live, and love.  This isn’t a political stance.  Or a religious one.  It’s a human one.  But many have so strongly aligned their opinions to their identity that they can’t see humans for what they are, human.  Imperfect.  Trying to figure it out.  Just like me.  Just like you.  I recently learned that someone very close to me struggles talking to me because they think I am “of a certain political party.”  How odd.  Why is caring for others, wanting to leave a better world for our kids, and leading with love a bad thing?  When you find your healing, you find your people.  That one isn’t one of mine.