What is a legacy?

We think maybe that we begin to understand what that means after we have babies. For isn't it these whom we leave behind? But what about if we can't have babies? Or what about if we don't want babies? Or what about if the babies we are given leave a legacy for which we are unfamiliar or speak a language we do not know?

Is it love? Is it a child? Is it a dollar? What is our deficit? What drives us? What pulls us awake in the dead of night?

We think that what we have or what we do not have defines who we are, but what is more important than a name? Your name.

"8 notes in an octave tell me there is a Divine presence," says Abraham Yellen of Night Beds.

We all have the same number of notes and yet far from the first two lips parting in a lullaby, far past the Beatles standing in front of thousands, still, here, now we have the ability to create a tune, a chorus, a light from our heart, unique to us. It is never a melody sung before for no one has walked the steps you have, felt your pain, lived through every mind-blowing joy and heartache as you have. The melody, too, looks, feels, sounds different. If it's not a song, it's words for a book or a line of code in an algorithm.

So we live. What do we pour our hearts, our lives into? How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.

We each have the same number of notes in an octave, the same number of letters in an alphabet, the same two hands to hold, to love, to give, to heal.

"These are healing hands" I tell my daughter Emiliana, holding her hands in mine. "These are healing hands, not hitting or hurting hands, that love and give love to the whooooole world."

We each are given a choice.

The dirt calls to us. Return to the dust from which you came...
But not our souls. Your soul is rooting for you.
What is a legacy? What is your legacy?