Circle of Life Exercise

Note: This ritual can be done during a Yizkor service or other gatherings focused exploring on death, dying and legacy.

Step 1: Reflection on Your Ancestors

Close your eyes. Think about your parents—consider three facts about each of them.

Their names
Where they were born
What they did for a living

It can be anything, as long as it is specific to their lives.

Next, think about your grandparents.

Again, try to recall three facts about each of them.
If you can’t think of three, recall as many as you can.

Continue this process for your great-grandparents and, if possible, your great-great-grandparents. Notice how, with each preceding generation, you may know less and less about them.

After a loved one’s passing, we often say they live on in our memories. And this is true—but as this exercise reveals, no one is remembered forever. The living will become the dead, and with them, the memories they held will also fade.

Step 2: Considering Your Legacy

Now, shift your thoughts to your own life.*

How much of your life will be remembered by your children?
By your grandchildren?
By their children’s children?

Much like your great-great-grandparents, your own details will eventually fade. Each generation carries forward a smaller imprint of the past, until the fact that you lived at all may be forgotten.

* Alternative step without children/grandchildren: Now shift your thoughts to your own life. How much of your life will be remembered by people in your life who you directly helped or touched. How much of your life will be remembered by those, who these people helped or touched.” The rest of the meditation remains the same.

As stated in Genesis 18:27, “I am nothing but dust and ashes.”

Abraham’s words resonate beyond himself—to you, me, everyone we know, and generations yet to come.

So, who you are in this moment may seem fleeting, as impermanent as a passing cloud. And yet…

Step 3: The Interwoven Chain of Life

This idea is often paired with another: “The world was created for me.” How can we understand this contradiction?

Let’s try something tangible:

Stand up and form a circle with others. 2. Turn sideways and place your hands on the shoulders of the person in front of you.

This circle only remains whole if everyone maintains their position. If even one person lets go, the entire circle is broken.

Now, think about the people who came before you—those who made your life possible. Consider the generations that helped them and the ones who helped those before them.

Visualize an interconnected chain, stretching back:

To the time of your ancestors
To the time of the patriarchs and matriarchs
To the earliest humans

Now, reflect on the person behind you—the one with hands on your shoulders. They symbolize the people in your life who helped you get to where you are today.

But this person also has someone behind them, holding their shoulders— Representing the people who helped the people who helped you.

And so the chain extends back for millennia.

Even though you cannot know the identities or lives of individuals beyond a few generations, you know for certain that because those people lived, you are here today.

Step 4: Your Impact on Future Generations

Now, consider the person whose shoulders you are holding. They symbolize the people whose lives you have affected—because of your choices, your actions, and your presence in the world.

And those people will go on to help others—who will help others— Creating an ever-expanding ripple effect into the far future.

So, even if generations from now no one remembers your name, Your life HAS made a difference—in ways you may never see, but will endure for eons to come.

Step 5: Embracing Your Place in the Tapestry of Life

“The world was created for me—so that I, in turn, could help create the world.”

You may feel small, but you are an essential, integral part of humanity’s tapestry. What you have done matters, and its effects will endure long after you are gone.

When Joseph meets his father Jacob, now called Israel, Jacob says:

“I will die this time, since I have seen your face, that you are still alive.”

I think that the deeper means of these words is that Jacob can accept his own mortality because he sees that he will live on through his son— And through the generations that follow, down through the ages, all the way to this moment.