Interlude LXXXV: Legacy | Erik Erikson, Robert Kegan, Generativity, Adult Development, and What Remains After We’re Gone

What does it mean to leave a legacy?

Is legacy really about being remembered, preserving a name, or creating something that survives us?

Or is the deeper measure of a life found in what other people become because we were here?

In Interlude LXXXV of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey examines legacy, generativity, adult development, intergenerational influence, mentorship, family inheritance, leadership, memory, and the responsibilities we carry toward futures we’ll never personally inhabit.

The episode begins with a simple fact of maturity:

Eventually, the future contains more and more events we won’t live to see.

Children will grow older.

Students will teach students we’ll never meet.

Organizations will continue after their founders are gone.

Someone may repeat a sentence we once spoke without remembering where they learned it.

The world continues after our departure.

That raises a difficult question: