Leaving a Legacy.

There’s been a lot in the British sports news this week about the plaudits being heaped on Sir Alex Ferguson, manager of Manchester United FC. During his twenty five years in charge he’s won so many league championships, so many FA cup victories, so many European championships etc, etc. This must be a bittersweet experience for him because, as good as it must be to have one’s achievements recognised, it must also be a poignant marker of mortality.

But there’s another aspect to this. Sporting achievements are essentially ephemeral; they become merely memories the instant the trophy is awarded. What remains is nothing more than a small ink blot in a record book. Sports people even recognise this fact with the ubiquitous maxim ‘you’re only as good as your last game.’ Those who create something lasting, however – the architects, the artists, the composers, the authors, the builders, the structural engineers – leave something behind as a legacy. And this lends credence to my own view that ‘the person is unimportant; only the work matters.’ Or, in its more abstract yet possibly more meaningful aspect, ‘even the teacher is unimportant; only the lesson matters.’