“What we leave behind is not as important as how we lived.”
Capt. James T. Kirk to Capt. Jean Luc Picard, on “Star Trek – Generations”
That declaration may be true to the degree that the phrase ‘what we leave behind’ refers only to material and tangible things. But Captain Kirk’s statement is ultimately incomplete in that how we lived is what we leave behind. How we lived will make an indelible mark on the lives of those who witnessed us, more surely than any structure we built, money we donated, books we wrote, words we said, discoveries we made.