Why thinking about your legacy now could boost your mental health

When Beth Hunter’s father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, she asked if she could record a conversation with him to keep for the future. He said no. Rather than reflect on his diagnosis or mortality, he chose to spend his remaining time handwriting his war stories before having them typed up — his own idea of what was worth leaving behind.

Hunter, an associate professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio who studies legacy in cancer survivorship, says most people rarely consider what they’ll leave behind until forced to. “The vast majority of people don’t think about it,” she says. Yet she argues everyone leaves some kind of legacy, consciously or not: researchers typically divide it into three overlapping types — biological (our bodies and genetics), material (wealth and possessions), and values (the beliefs, faith and culture we pass on).

Bodies, genes and inheritance

Biological legacy isn’t limited to having children; some people choose to donate their bodies to science so medical students and researchers can learn from them. One Belgian study of people registered as body donors found contributing to scientific progress was the main motivation, though some also said doing so gave meaning to their death.

In Hunter’s own research with female cancer survivors, many hoped their legacy would encourage relatives to adopt healthier habits and attend cancer screenings. “Leaving some sort of mark” mattered deeply to women confronting a possible terminal diagnosis, she says — and she believes this instinct could even be harnessed to encourage more patients to join clinical trials.

For people nearing the end of life, hospices often support “legacy activities” — journals, scrapbooks, letters or an “ethical will” recording values and advice for loved ones. Studies on terminally ill adults and children suggest these exercises can ease depression and anxiety and support the grieving process.

What people really want to pass on

While material legacies like inheritances, heirlooms or named donations are common, research suggests most people care more about passing on values — things like kindness and a sense of duty to others. One study of 38 women across different ages and health conditions found they typically tried to model their values through behaviour, faith or community involvement, or by explicitly recording family stories and milestones. Separately, researchers interviewing older adults who had written legacy documents found the process helped them find peace, process the past and stay motivated to keep living — with one participant calling it a reminder of “what you’ve survived, what obstacles you’ve faced, how you face them, and what philosophies helped you face them.”

The scientific study of legacy is relatively young. In 1950, psychoanalyst Erik Erikson introduced the concept of “generativity” — concern for future generations — as a key midlife task, warning that failing to achieve it could harm later-life wellbeing.

Underneath it all, says Kimberly Wade-Benzoni, a professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, lies the fear of death. “Death is really at the heart of the psychology of legacy motivation,” she says. “When we’re reminded about death, we remember we don’t want to die, we want to live.” Thinking about legacy, she argues, can shift people from “death anxiety” toward something more constructive: “death reflection.”

Jesse Bering, a psychology professor at the University of Otago, links the drive to our need for narrative meaning. “The legacy drive can be seen as part of our need for coherent storytelling,” he says, though he warns that fixating on how we’ll be remembered can “rob us of our appreciation and enjoyment of the more visceral here-and-now.”

Still, Wade-Benzoni says the benefits are real regardless of whether we ever get to control how we’re remembered: thinking ahead about legacy tends to make people act in ways that benefit future generations, offering both a sense of purpose in life and what researchers call a form of “symbolic immortality” after death.

Source: BBC News