The famous artist Andy Warhol said:- “In the future everybody will be world famous for 15 minutes”.
In this world of short lived media publicity or celebrity of an individual or phenomenon, the prediction rings true but the reality is otherwise.
The overwhelming majority of humanity will be born, live and die in anonymity at least as far as the wider world is concerned beyond their own family and friends.
The same is true of those who went before us. Perhaps a faded photograph or two of somebody you might remember as a grandparent but in the photograph looking impossibly young and optimistic. How did they leave their mark on the world?
The answer in my opinion is very much the same as you or I, by quietly getting on with it, working throughout their lives, supporting their families and when they eventually died leaving behind them only their flesh and blood as an inheritance for their descendants.
No matter how important we might consider that we are, even in this world of instant and mass communication, our lives are essentially no different to theirs in that respect.
In the wider sense of leaving a mark, we are surrounded every day by the marks of our forebears. In the countryside it is largely manmade and man shaped and in the towns and cities all of which reflect the work of generations which went before us.
As you grow older and have more perspective on life, you cannot help but admire and in so doing honour the memory of all those unsung and largely anonymous individuals who quietly got on with it and did what had to be done before passing on the baton to the next generation that took their place.
They live, locked in our memories, as long as we do and when we pass, perhaps successive generations may at least for a while remember us. We can hope for no more.
I hope you enjoyed my interpretation of what it means to leave your mark, and honour those before you.
Ernest Marlin 
Haaaaaaha…. 🙂