The Lifescriber: We are future ancestors

Finding truth and meaning in the legacy you leave behind: how future ancestor thinking transforms your choices today.

“A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in.”

I first heard this Greek proverb when it made the rounds on social media, spoken by Penelope Wilton’s character in After Life. It spoke directly to the work I do in my Authors Circle, where I guide people in writing their life stories for their families. Each story is just a seed planted, really, and I may not live long enough to see it break through the ground, but that, to me, is the heart of future ancestor thinking.

I was introduced to the term “future ancestors” by my mentor, Dr. Jean Houston, through her work with Dr. Anneloes Smitsman in the Future Humans series. Before that, whenever I thought of ancestors, I pictured my grandparents, wrinkled, much-loved, but permanently residing in the past.

This idea of future ancestors flipped the direction of my gaze. It invited me to see myself not just as a descendant of people who came before, but as an ancestor-in-the-making for those who come after.

This thinking forces a tricky question: What will my descendants say about me? What will they say about us as a collective, and the mess or the magic we leave behind?

Facing the truth as future ancestors

Future ancestor thinking compels us to look at a truth we often try to outrun: we are going to die. Our time here is limited. But we can shape what happens next by the choices we make now.

When I mentor authors in writing their legacy stories, we often hit a wall when they recall their painful moments. I always urge them to write not from a place of wounding, but from a place of healing. Wounds fester. They catch. Hurt people, as they say, hurt people. If the only thing you leave behind is a healed ancestral line, that is a massive legacy.

This applies to our work in the world, too.

If you lead a team, what will people remember you for? There are workplaces so toxic that people spend years recovering from them. But there are others where people say, “I became more myself there.” If you are someone’s boss today, you are already writing the story they will one day tell about power and worth. Are you building a space where people can create without fear? Or are you, maybe without meaning to, training them to stay small?

As citizens, what kind of country are we building?

What you do today matters

In my 20s, one of my spiritual teachers, Ahalya Running Deer, told me, “Do today what will feel good tomorrow.” At first, it sounded like a contradiction to “being present,” but I understood. There is a version of me who has to wake up tomorrow and live with the consequences of my choices today.

Future ancestor thinking stretches that timeline. It urges us to do what will feel right not only tomorrow, but 50 years from now, when someone we love is living inside the world shaped by our choices.

We don’t get to edit how our descendants will talk about us. They might say, “They saw the floods and fires and still chose convenience.” Or they might say, “They made mistakes, but at some point, they turned and chose differently.”

We can’t control the judgment. We can only control the raw material we leave them: the patterns we interrupt, the apologies we finally make, the policies we support, and the stories we take the time to write down.

When I picture some future child asking, “Who was she?” I don’t imagine a list of achievements. I imagine someone saying, “She tried to heal what she could. She paid attention. She planted her little trees.”

That is the work: to live and write in such a way that even if they never know our names, those who come after us can sit in a little more shade because we were here.

 

 

The concept of the ‘future ancestor’ flips the direction of our gaze, inviting us to see ourselves not just as descendants, but as an ancestor-in-the-making for the next generations.

 

 

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