This is my Grandfather (centre), photographed around 1950 on his way home from a shift. He was a coal miner, working literally at the coal face. He saved lives. He grafted. He carried the weight of a dangerous job so his family could move forward.
I often think about that when I’m sat at my laptop, doing work that’s meaningful but hardly heroic. The contrast is stark. Different worlds. Different risks. But the same intention runs underneath it: doing something you care about, something that provides, something that shapes a life.
I know he’d be proud that I chose a career I genuinely enjoy, rather than one that demanded a daily gamble. That feels like a quiet kind of inheritance. Not the work itself, but the commitment behind it.
What did you inherit from the generations before you, without even realising?
