‘Legacy’ With God

Recently, I’ve been thinking about legacy.

And it started in a very random way.

Watching Jay-Z perform.

Watching Arsenal.

Watching the Knicks.

Watching the DRC team on the World Cup stage.

Watching England go on this streak.

Different worlds, same feeling.

History.

You can feel when something means more than the current moment.

People aren’t only reacting to what’s happening in front of them.

They’re reacting to every year they waited.

Every disappointment.

Every person who came before.

Every time they nearly got there.

Every story attached to the shirt, the city, the stage or the name.

That’s why certain moments hit differently.

It’s not just a performance.

It’s not just a match.

It’s not just a win.

It’s proof that something lasted.

And I think that’s what legacy really is.

Not just being remembered.

Building something that continues to mean something after the excitement has passed.

Watching Jay-Z, I wasn’t only thinking about the songs.

I was thinking about time.

About how someone can build a career long enough that the music becomes attached to people’s lives.

One song reminds someone of school.

Another reminds them of their first job.

Another reminds them of New York.

Another reminds them of who they were before life got serious.

That’s bigger than having a hit.

That’s legacy.

Football and basketball do the same thing.

People inherit teams from their parents.

Families organise their entire weekends around matches.

A child can wear the same shirt their dad wore twenty years earlier and somehow feel connected to a story they weren’t even alive for.

And seeing the DRC represented carries something different for me.

Because that isn’t only football.

That’s identity.

That’s parents, grandparents, language, migration, memory and pride all sitting together.

It makes you think about what gets passed down.

I think we often talk about legacy like it’s something you begin thinking about when you’re older.

But we’re building it now.

In how we work.

How we treat people.

What we create.

What we stand for.

What we keep doing when nobody is paying attention.

I’m almost ten years into blogging.

Which is actually mad because I still remember pressing publish and wondering whether anybody would care.

At the time, I wasn’t thinking about legacy.

I just loved music.

I wanted to talk about it.

I wanted to create space for the stories I wasn’t seeing.

I wanted to prove that my voice belonged in the conversation.

But now I understand that every interview, article, panel, tweet, blog and random voice note idea has been building something.

Not perfectly.

Not always strategically.

Sometimes very chaotically lmaooooo.

But consistently.

And maybe consistency is one of the foundations of legacy.

People usually see the moment when everything connects.

They don’t see the years of repetition before it.

The empty rooms.

The unpaid opportunities.

The posts that barely got likes.

The ideas that didn’t land.

The times you wanted to stop.

Legacy is built in those moments too.

God has been reminding me that I don’t need to rush into becoming important.

I need to be faithful with what I already have.

The platform.

The ideas.

The relationships.

The opportunities.

The responsibility.

Because impact isn’t only about how loudly your name is said.

It’s about what your work leaves in people.

Did it encourage someone?

Did it open a door?

Did it make somebody feel represented?

Did it change how a story was told?

Did it create something another person could build from?

As I enter the final year of my 20s, I’m not only asking what I want to achieve.

I’m asking what I want to leave.

Not in a dramatic way.

God willing, I have plenty of time please.

But I want to live with more intention.

I don’t want moments just for the photo.

I want the photo to represent something real.

I want the wins to connect to a bigger story.

I want the things I build to have roots.

Because moments are beautiful.

But legacy is what gives them meaning.