The only question you need to ask

I caught up with my uncle during the week, he has started to look into our family tree and has been to visit my relatives' graves. Some of them have names, dates of birth and death. Some had little more than a plot number to identify where they laid. Some have nothing at all. 

It really struck me that as little as two generations before me I know nothing about the people who are the reason I am alive today. I don’t know what they loved or who they loved, I don’t know what made them smile, what made them cry, what made them laugh.

Now I could be taken two ways:

1. Feel awful because I don’t know these things or 

2. Feel free at how little we leave behind

I chose freedom. To me it’s so freeing to know that what I do in this world matters far less than my ego would like to think. It’s not about the things we get caught up on every day like, how do I look? How much money do I have? Should I buy a bigger house? A bigger car? 

All of this has left me thinking, how do I want to live my life knowing that in two generations to come my family may not know much more about me than where my grave is and that has inspired a new question to replace all of those above. 

Does this make me happy?

Because if there’s anything I can leave behind in this world, I hope it’s happiness.