We’ve just finished producing a new short video for the Hathaway-Sycamores Child & Family Services Legacy Society. I’d like to share it with you and then I’ll briefly tell you why. You can view it here:

I write from time to time about the work we do at Hathaway-Sycamores and the 7000 lives we touch each year in the greater Los Angeles area. The work we do with families in communities throughout southern California is complex, demanding, dynamic, and unending. Our program staff offers selfless expertise in residential treatment, foster care, adoption, transitional independent living, mental health counseling, and educational enrichment readying youth to lead forever productive lives.

I have been involved with this vibrant organization for more than 15 years, and my volunteer work in supporting children’s services has paralleled my business and creative work all the way back to my school years. There’s a reason. This work matters. This work is important. The impact we have on bringing hope to young lives is as vital a part of my life as anything else I do.

If you find yourself with the opportunity to make lives better — lives they may not have had the kindness, nurturing, or healthy upbringing many of us take for granted — then you may at some point feel the way I do. We have a precious, brief amount of time to spend wandering the earth. What we choose to do in the course of our journey ultimately becomes our legacy.

A legacy is not something we can entirely control, because people will remember us in different ways for different reasons regardless of what we accomplish or how we go about accomplishing it. The part of our legacy that we can control revolves around the wishes of others we choose to help realize while we have the opportunity, and the carrying out of our own wishes after we are gone.

To say that it all boils down to money is only the tiniest part of the picture. Money is a commodity. It only has value if we ascribe value to it. We can gain it, lose it, make it work harder through better decision-making, waste it on the frivolous, or share it with those who matter to us. We can save it or spend it, invest it or stockpile it, struggle when we are without it, or earn the ability to direct its impact. I think when we care enough about those who have less than we do, our lives begin to matter more, if only in the briefest of moments. Intentions are important. Good works that arise from positive intentions can outlast those brief moments for generations, possibly forever when the proceeds of our gifts compound and carry forward our intentions way beyond the scope we could ever imagine.

We have that chance in life, to leave a legacy. That’s why I committed to help in building the Hathaway-Sycamores Legacy Society, and why I produced this video. I want you to feel what I feel about the pure joy of giving, of having an impact on the world that outlasts our own days, and turning ideas into actions that improve the lives of those around us whether we know the recipients or not. You many not have a fortune to give, but that doesn’t matter at all. Give what you can, do what you can, and you can leave a legacy that is yours alone. Your reward will be beyond anything my words can describe. It will be pure, authentic, and real. It will be yours.

Every single one of us will leave a legacy of some kind or other. What’s yours? What do you want it to be? What are you doing right now to make that happen? Time escapes us every day, but our legacy is forever. You can’t craft it in its entirety, but you can shape it to be a reflection of the values you cherish.

I’d love to see you join us this year at Celebrating Children. I’d love to see you join our Legacy Society. Most of all I’d like you to think about what your legacy will be, and how you can have an impact on the lives of those in need well beyond the years it took you to get where you are.

It’s not an easy choice. It’s not an easy subject. Nothing that really matters is ever easy. You matter. Your intentions matter. Your actions matter.

Every legacy matters.