Legacy
2002 09 01
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I used to consider that age-old question: "Would you rather have fame or fortune?" and I always came up with the same answer. Fortune. Not only because money is such an attractive thing (and no, money can't buy happiness, but as a good friend of mine is fond of saying, it can sure make misery a whole lot easier to bear), but also because fame robs us of one of our most precious possessions: our privacy.
Privacy is one of the things that makes us truly individual, at least in the sense of having the choice to absent ourselves from the herd. The word "individual" is somewhat funny in a way, depending on how you look at it. If you split it in the right way it could be "a duality that is not divisible". Perhaps that's the point, though, the duality being that we are singular as a human entity, but are still social creatures, still needing to belong to the group.
Privacy, time, our own thoughts, the things that are most precious to each singular human soul.
But I digress...
I still don't want fame, but remembrance is something entirely different. Remembrance is what makes us immortal. I've heard it said that no one truly dies so long as they are remembered by at least one person. I think most of us want to be remembered, because none of us like the thought of disappearing, none of us like the aura of insignificance that being forgotten carries. We are jealous and protective of that sense of importance. Some of us don't have a choice in how we're remembered, or why, and I'd say that many don't care, just so long as they are remembered at all.
I am very simple, I suppose, in what I'd want to be remembered for, if I had the choice. I think I'd choose to be remembered for having created a work of artistic genius, something that inspired others to other great works of artistic genius. Or I'd like to be remembered for having solved some great scientific or intellectual puzzle or problem. Perhaps my ego just wants me to be remembered for being astute, intelligent, knowledgeable, smart... a genius. I know I don't like to be thought of as ignorant, or stupid.
Or maybe my ego wants me to be remembered for having made people happy or secure.
Or perhaps my ego still remembers the times when it wanted to be an inspiration, to be remembered by individual people for having helped to enrich their lives in some way.
All I can be certain of is that I don't want to be infamous, don't want to be remembered badly, don't want to be remembered in the same way we remember perpetrators of mass destruction, serial-killers, or disastrous politicians. I don't want to be remembered for having fucked something up so radically that the entire world had to suffer for it.
Or maybe I don't so much care what the world thinks, so long as when I am laid out upon my deathbed I will have as few regrets as possible. And maybe, if I'm lucky and clever, I shall utter some deathbed witticism that will go down in history the same way Oscar Wilde's deathbed pronouncement is. "Either that wallpaper goes, or I do."