What is your legacy?

Today I was scared when I went to make an Internet purchase with a new credit card I had just received.
When the site asked me to provide the expiration date of the card, I discovered that the card has a validity greater than mine!
That reminded me the other day, when an 86-year-old lady told me that she had found an "old lady" in the church ...
I had to interrupt her by asking:
"- Please, let me define 'old lady.'"
"- Oh, she must be about 90 years old," – she replied.
After all, what is life?
Guimarães Rosa, physician and Brazilian writer, in his book "Grande Sertão Veredas" wrote:

"Living is very dangerous."

Living is indeed dangerous. But what about birth, then?
Have you ever imagined how difficult it is to be born?
It is so difficult that nature is wise, hiding in memory the moment of birth and the first months of life.
It is so shocking to get out of the womb that it is "erased" from our memory so we do not suffer.
For the safest place you have ever been in the Universe is your mother's womb.
You've been there 8 months, 8 months and a half, very well, doing nothing and in the liquid medium.
And we love the net!
You were there, swaying. Without having to breathe. Being fed automatically by a tube. There was almost no noise. There was no light. He had no contact. The temperature was always balanced homeostatic.
The best place in the Universe you've been ...
So much so that when you're down, you want to go back there!
Have you lost something, someone, a love?
You want to stay in the dark, lying down with your knees bent toward your chest.
Fetal position.
You see people with mental problems in a hospital scattered, lonely and lying like this ... shrunken.
In your mother's womb, you were quiet ...
But after 8 months, 8 months and a half, all of a sudden the liquid seeps out.
You start to feel contractions around you and you are slipping, sliding, sliding towards a light ...
Someone holds you!
You get in touch for the first time.
It is erected. Removed from the uterus.
There's light in the room. The noise is deafening. Changed the temperature, ...
And the person who lifted you from the womb still slaps you in the ass!
.... So you make your first gesture out of the womb, which is to inspire.
Inhale the air ...
Because your last gesture in life will be to expire.
Exhale the air ...
And between the first time you breathe in and the last time you breathe out has life. That's why it's good not to waste it.
And there are people who waste humiliating people, being hypocritical, pretending, diverting resources, ...
And look at the trouble!
Life is too short to be considered "small."
75 years is our average life today.
And 75 years is nothing!
For young people it may seem like a lot, but for the rest it's the day after tomorrow.
When you're 30, think about dying at age 75?
"- Not now!"
And these 75 years are divided as follows:
From 0 to 25, you're riding. Its physical structure, psychic, relational, cognitive, reproductive, ...
From 26 to 50, you are reproducing other humans and working in high activity.
And from the age of 51 to 75, you're getting ready for the landing.
So, from 0 to 25 years you ride and from 50 to 75 you dismount.
Those who are in the last stages of life know that they are in it because every day, at their breakfast, there is less food and more medicine boxes.
You will cross an avenue and you are in doubt of running, having a heart attack or walking and risk being run over.
You know you're at this stage when you have less biceps and more tummy every day.
And women at this stage are hit hard by the Law of Gravity.
Everything in them will point towards the ground ...
Many will fetch struts, such as botulinum venom.
It will enter the phase that the Brazilians can call "California Dreaming". What is that of The Mamas And The Papas, in a phonetic allusion in the Portuguese language similar to the synonyms of the breasts ("mamas") are confused with jowl ("papas").
And besides living only 75 years, we are an animal that sleeps too much.
I know people who sleep 8 hours a day.
That is, in 24 hours they can sleep a third of the day.
In a 75 year life, they spend 25 years sleeping.
In fact, there are people who, if you ask on a Monday what they did at the weekend, she says:
"- Enjoy! Slept!"
And sometimes he even adds:
"- I'm crazy that the holiday comes so I can sleep for a week!"
Look, this person is called a "rational animal" ...
But we are not just an animal that sleeps a lot. We are also an animal that eats too much!
According to the FAO - the UN organization leading international efforts to eradicate hunger - each of us consumes a pound of food a day.
A pound and a half of solids, liquids and gases.
Which is not so much, because you probably already ate today, will eat soon and then will still snack.
One 300 ml can of soda has 300 grams.
Today, by 11 pm, you should have eaten more than a pound and a half.
As you are hungry on the planet, some of us eat more than that to give this average.
At the end of a life of 75 years, a pound and a half a day gives 42 tons of food.
One and a half times 75 years ...
So while you are alive you will digest 42 tons of food from the planet.
And, of course, we are not an animal that only has a digestive system.
We also have excretory system.
Therefore, for the planet not to leave the axis and maintain its balance, the Law of Lavoisier has to prevail.
Each of us also releases a pound of waste a day.
Solid, liquid and gaseous.
What, at the end of a life of 75 years, also gives 42 tons of excrement.
So when you leave, the planet will not be the same ...
You will have swallowed 42 tons of it and will leave as inheritance for the next generations 42 tons of excrement.
What is your work?
What is your legacy?
You know there are people who destroy the environment, humiliate people, steal, deflect resources, kill, pretend ...
Just so they can sleep more than they need, overeat and excrete in special restrooms.
The magazines that sell the most are those that look chic and famous in their beds, on their desks and in their bathrooms.
The tv shows that are most successful are those that show people confined to a house or a farm, sleeping, eating, drinking and excreting through the holes they have.
Coincidence?
This is the realm of mediocrity.
There are people who say they do not have an hour a day to play with their son, to see the moon with his wife or husband, to pray, to study, ...
But you have an hour a day to stand still watching people eating, drinking, sleeping, and excreting.
It is so strong that "quality of life" for us, nowadays, is each owning its own bedroom with bathroom.
Real estate ads do not focus on having a better living in a large living room, which has a large kitchen with a long table where everyone can sit around.
No! It's the amount of toilets!
It's private life.
Is that rising in life?
You know what people say when they're dying?
(Anyone from the medical field knows this).
She does not stick to you and says:
"- Doctor, for God's sake, let me live another day that I want to send on more people."
"- Doctor, please, let me stay alive for another week that I want to humiliate a few more people."
"- Doctor, for God's sake, I have to stay alive for two more days because I want to buy another car."
No!
You know what people say when they're dying?
They stick to you and say,
"- Doctor, for God's sake, let me stay alive one more day just to be able to hug my brother, whom I fought ten years ago and we never spoke again."
"- Doctor, please, let me stay alive for another week just to play with my kids because I did not have time to do that."
"- Doctor, for God's sake, let me stay alive for another hour just to be able to tell my wife how much I love her, because I thought if I said too much, she would be unwell."
(What is truth...).
You know what people say when they leave?
What matters in the crossing.
This is how the great Guimarães Rosa once said:

"The important thing is not to arrive nor to leave, it is the crossing."

And this trip you make with other people.
So what is your work?
What is your legacy?
Can die teacher, doctor, mayor, president, entrepreneur, department director, ...
Whatever!
Have you thought?
Have a life that is not banal and useless. Futile.
And if you swear, you will not miss it.
Interesting...
The work is not to be immortal, which no one is.
But it is to be eternal.
And not be eternal from the physical point of view, but in the work that will leave.
In what they help to do. In that city, in that family, in that office, in that office.
Something that, on the day you leave - and leave -, do not be afraid to ask why you lived.
Know how to respond because you did what you did.

(Sorry for the outburst in this lousy English without review, in a simple tribute to Andrew Carnegie)

@FransedeCastro