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DECEMBER 4, 2007 / Legacy Project / – Wondering what to give your parent or grandparent who has everything? Or maybe you're looking for a truly meaningful gift for your children or grandchildren. The Legacy Project, a national education initiative at www.legacyproject.org has a new Life Statement program. In keeping with the tradition in some cultures of writing an ethical will – which, instead of passing along valuables, passes along values – a Life Statement is a way to share the core of who you are and, through the Legacy Project's educational work, make it meaningful in the context of the lives of your family and others.
With the rising interest in family history, and as Baby Boomers age, more people are thinking about their legacy. Life stories, memorials, and autobiographies are often a recitation of facts and events without the personal meaning behind them. A Life Statement is an opportunity to create, permanently record, and share your most significant life experiences, ideas, values, and hopes. It is a blueprint for living and a meaningful gift to the next generation.
"The Legacy Project Life Statement is to older adults what Facebook and MySpace offer young adults," says Legacy Project Chair Susan Bosak. "It allows parents and grandparents to connect with family and friends in a way that means something for their stage of life and pass along their life insights to the next generation."
Bosak believes that learning about real life from real people is one of the best ways to understand ourselves and the world around us. Life Statements are posted not only for family and friends to view, but they become part of the Legacy Project's educational programs with children and adults. They become part of an ongoing learning community celebrating collective wisdom and action.
"Most people want to feel as though the life they're living matters, not only to family but to the community. A Life Statement enables you to make a genuine contribution and share your life experiences, values, ideas, and hopes with others," says Bosak.
A Life Statement can be posted to honor the memory of a parent, grandparent, or other family member or friend, or you can create one for yourself as a special gift to your family, to celebrate the birth of a child or grandchild, or as a personal journey of exploration. The Legacy Project has researched and developed a simple template with question prompts, or you can use your own creativity.
Bosak has posted a Life Statement to honor the memory of her grandmother, Eva Krawchuk, who passed away at the age of 102. Through her own need to leave something of herself behind, often giving her granddaughter a small keepsake at the end of visits as "something to remember me by," Krawchuk taught her granddaughter many of the values that Bosak now draws on for her work with the Legacy Project.
Krawchuk's Life Statement captures her strength of personality, noting that the first man her father suggested she marry she rejected as not good looking enough. The Life Statement also links Krawchuk's personal experiences to historical events that helped shaped who she was. In the conflict that followed the Russian Revolution of 1917, Krawchuk recalled soldiers coming to her family's home, taking away all the vegetables they had grown and their livestock, and beating her with the end of a rifle. She learned firsthand about violence and seemed to make a personal promise to herself that she would practice kindness and compassion.
"Those are the kinds of life lessons and values that you want to capture and pass on in a Life Statement," says Bosak. "It helps you explore who you are, your relationships with others, and your impact on the world."
As an extension of creating a Life Statement, the Legacy Project also offers the annual Listen to a Life Essay Contest in which young people can interview an older adult about their life experiences to win a Lenovo ThinkCentre computer and $25,000 of Orchard software.
For more information about creating, recording, and sharing a Life Statement, visit www.legacyproject.org.
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