Credit to teft for the s6e15 “Tapestry” post for inspiration.
Full quotation from Generations:
Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. But I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey, and reminds us to cherish every moment because they’ll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important how we lived.
That is a really bad take IMO. Each of us is only here for a fraction of a section in cosmological time. “How we live” is much less important that “what we leave behind” because subsequent generations only get what we leave them. As an example, the philosophy encapsulated in this quote is a great argument that we should ignore climate change because continuing to use carbon based energy would make the lives living today better in an easier way.
Yet more evidence that Generations is a bad Trek movie.
Even though you’re just right, I want to give a little bit of defense of Picard’s quote:
I think the point he’s trying to make is that we can’t always know the outcomes of our choices, but we can at least examine whether we made the best choices available at the time.
That’s my take on it. Ensuring a better future for others can be incorporated into how one lives. Not to mention he said this before he had a kid (timeline puts Lil’ Locutus’ inception around Insurrection).