SDS 300: Legacy

Welcome back to the SuperDataScience podcast ladies and gentlemen, super excited to have you on this super special anniversary episode, episode number 300. How crazy is that? That means that this podcast has been live for over three years now, three years and 300 episodes later. And I want to really from the bottom of my heart say a huge thank you to you, to the listener for being part of this journey. I’m very humbled and inspired that you’re listening to this and knowing that even one person is listening to this, let alone thousands, brings a lot of meaning to my life, to my personal journey. So from the bottom of my heart, a huge, huge thank you for being part of this.

And today’s episode is about legacy. So Hadelin and I are currently in South Dakota in a little city called Custer. And we’re here for a business networking event. And if you’re an executive and you’re interested to know what the event is, it’s called the Hero Club and its run by Jeffrey Hayzlett. And where we are is near the Black Hills National Park. And this is where also Mount Rushmore is with the four president faces carved into the mountain. Now we’re actually, the event is actually been held at a different Memorial also in a Memorial national treasure of the US, it’s the Memorial is called the Crazy Horse Memorial. And it is another carving that’s in progress. There’s been in a progress for a very long time and it’s a carving of a Native American leader from the 19th century called Crazy Horse.

And so here’s a little bit of history about this monument. It’ll start in 1948, 71 years ago by Korczak Ziolkowski, is currently being continued by some of his children. The monument is 641 feet in length and 563 feet in height. In meters, that’s about 195 meters long and 172 meters high. So, as you can imagine, it’s a huge thing. It’s like 200 meters long, two football fields long. It’s actually the biggest mountain carving in the world. And, why is today’s episode’s called legacy? Has this got to do something with this monument? Well, I found that we, like, we all found it very interesting is one of the, actually one of the center pieces, or like the central conversational topics for this networking event was that Korczak Ziolkowski started this monument back in 1948, which is 71 years ago, knowing that he won’t finish it in his lifetime. And so, and the reason why it cannot be finished fast, why has been going on for 71 years and it’s probably going to keep going on for another couple of decades. Nobody knows how long it’s going to keep going on.

They probably will probably finish a part of the hand and the horse. So it’s this beautiful sculpture of the Crazy Horse sitting, the Native American leader sitting on his horse pointing forward. If you Google it, you’ll find some mini versions that they’re completed, of course, and they look amazing. And already this mountain carving is looking very impressive, but it’s going to take a very long time. And the reason for that is that even right now, there’s about, right now there’s about 14 sculptors working on it at a time. And even if they had all the money in the world and they could put it as many sculptors as they wanted on that mountain, they could only put 26 at a time. And that’s due to the shape of this mountain, the shape of the sculpture and due to safety reasons that sculptors can’t be working on each other in case something falls. So they can only have 26 working on there at a time.

Whereas in Mount Rushmore, which was completed in, I think it was about a couple of decades, around 20 years or so, there was 400 sculptors working. So that’s like less than 5% of people working on this sculpture, which is going to be even bigger. And that’s why in advance they knew that it’s not going to be finished in, in well Korczak knew it is not going to be finished in his lifetime. And in fact his children who are working on it now also know that, who are running the company, also know that, or the Memorial, they also know that it’s not going to be finished in their lifetime. They just hope that, most likely and they hope that their kids or their grandkids will get to see the finished result. And so it’s a very inspiring thing to see or to know that somebody started a project that they know isn’t going to be finished in their lifetime.

When we think about our projects that we work on, whether it’s health projects, our personal projects, work projects, education projects, language projects, I don’t know, sub development projects, that we always think or we expect that we’re going to finish them in our lifetimes. And this is out of a completely different mindset. And what I liked yesterday during the panel with two of Korczak’s daughters and their colleague, one of his daughters, Monique was asked the question “how do you feel about working on something that’s going to stand for thousands of years? That is going to be here, like the pyramids or like the Great Wall of China has been here forever and ever and like is going to last into the ages”. And she answered it in a beautiful way and I’m paraphrasing of course, but what she said was that she doesn’t think about leaving something on this planet that’s, like carving, metaphorically speaking her name into history through this sculpture.

Not at all. Like she’s not thinking about that this, this monument is gonna stand for thousands of years. She’s just thinking, what legacy am I going to leave for my children? And I thought that was really beautiful that, that that’s what she’s focusing on. She doesn’t want to leave a legacy. She’s just thinking about the next generation, not about preserving her name or her father’s name in history forever. And that is also backed by the fact that they don’t just have this carving in the mountain. They also have a museum. They also have a university where they actually educate people and help them like a proper university where they educate people and offer lots of different subjects and help them get jobs and actually be placed in the workforce and things like that.

So, and she actually says that when somebody asks, when will it be finished, she says, “It’s never finished”. It’s actually never finished because we are not just doing this sculpture. Even when the sculpture is done, which we’ll be decades from now, there’s still going to be the university, it’s still going to be the museum, it’s still going to be educating people. So it’s, it’s a legacy. It’s a continuing legacy, continuing project that is going to last well beyond their lifetimes and well beyond the next generation’s lifetimes because it’s just going to continue. They’re going to continue doing this. And leaving this legacy. And I thought if this is a beautiful thing, because we naturally, we tend to think about all the things that, our life is finite and all the things that we do, we want to kind of like finish them within our lifetimes and make sure that everything is done or like we get to see the results of all the things that we work on.

But once you change your mindset and you start thinking about what legacy am I leaving for the next generation, what are people going to have once I’m gone from this world? It changes the perspective. It changes the whole way and attitude, approach you have to life. It changes how you treat the environment. It changes how you, what things that you work on, it changes how you educate your children. It changes the books you read, it changes the thoughts that you have. It changes the things you learn. And I thought that was very refreshing view on things. And that’s why I wanted to call this today’s episode, leaving a legacy in the sense that once you change your mindset and think about what am I leaving for the next generation, what am I going to give?

Even if it’s not your own children, if it’s just the next generation of humans that are going to be living on this planet after you’re gone, what are you leaving for them? That really changes things. So there we go. That’s a today’s episode about leaving a legacy and hopefully that gave you some inspiration to look at the projects that you’re working on or the goals that you have, maybe in a different perspective and see what comes out of it.

Thank you so much for being here for 300 episodes or for however many you’ve been here. Always, always super happy to have new people on board. And I can’t wait to see you back here next time. And until then, happy analyzing.