consulting

This year is the first in a while where I won’t be giving my mother a present to open. I completed a bucket list item for both of us earlier this year when I took her to see Marc Anthony at Madison Square Garden during his “Legacy” Tour.

That’s an interesting name because I think about legacy a lot. I think about what people will say at my funeral. I think about what people will remember me for if I don’t have children. I wonder what my parents will have wished I did. I wonder if my brother will greet me at the pearly gates when my soul leaves my body. I wonder if I will be scared when the end comes.

Digital moves so fast that people forget their legacy. Digital is very much like life, it moves quickly, but nothing is forgotten. Think about the template of a life you’ve lived: you either built it and made your own way or tried to follow someone’s else. The “market” is similar to that in many ways–some savvy digital folks make a viral thing and suddenly became a source for desperate brands trying to harness it.

The thing is, there’s more to this game than a good tweet and a bright smile. 

There’s a sweet science.

You see, a very long time ago when I was a lowly digital consultant with a dream, I promised my mother that I’d take her to see Marc Anthony in concert. It was largely symbolic, but meant a lot to both of us. He is her favorite artist, and it was what she played when I would do chores as a kid on the weekends. 

Taking her to the concert meant more than nostalgia. It meant I was fulfilling a promise, and that I had not forgotten what I said to her. It meant the things that mattered to me then, still mattered now, and that she mattered.

Of course, seeing Marc meant I had accumulated the excess, the access, and the freedom she had always wished for me. It meant I had a disposable income. It meant that as a QPOC, I was okay. It meant I had “made it,” even for a short time. 

But the lesson here is simple, who you are and what you stand for, matters. Whether it’s IRL to your mom or to someone you’ve never met on Instagram. The social currency that you’re willing to sacrifice for likes, little hearts, and RTs has to be parallel to what you’d be willing to give up for real, true, love 24/7/365.

So while you’re posting in 2019, think about whether it’s about you, who you really are and if it’s true to your legacy. And if it is, it doesn’t matter how fast digital moves, it will never take it away from you.