On legacy and what’s left
I feel as everyone, ok, many, are lowkey obsessed with leaving a legacy, something that will stand as a forever simulacra of themselves for the people that come next.
The (cambrian) explosion of creative outlets coupled with unbelievable amounts of free time has supercharged this need into our conscious collective mind, and the funniest thing is, the people most concern about it are young, healthy, man.
What is going on?
Journaling, blogging (!), videos, photos, maker projects, drawings, are all healthy expression of your personality, the thought that they should be preserved and be accessible for generations to come is narcistic at best and megalomaniac at worse - it is not an healthy road you are going down.
As a general rule:
If something is of value to someone, it will take on a life of its own and be preserved without much of an effort on your part.
I get it
I have children, I want them to remember me, what I was like, what I stood for, how I saw the world, I not only want to pass on my genes but my memes too.
Question: Is it fair, or reasonable, to expect my kids to take time out of their lives to go read a lifetime of writing from me, or watch what amounts to days of footage, or to keep every single knick-knack I put together in an afternoon of swearing in the garage?
Same people will say “Yes!”, and those people probably have boxes of kindergartener drawings and poorly glued styrofoam-glitter extravaganza in their attic, but those memento are for lived life, a shortcut for the nostalgia rush, you were part of that memory, and now you are reliving it through fastly disintegrating plastic.
What you will leave behind, will not have the same meaning or function for your kids, as they were not part of that memory, not an active one at least: a 5 year old has no recollection of your midlife crisis after being fired, or the void you felt after losing the last of your parents - and should not!
Your permanent record is alive
Your legacy are your kids, your best and worse parts will be there in them, as you have traits of your parents, good and bad, so will they.
Spoiling the memory
There is another argument against leaving piles and piles of records behind, and that is, you might ruin a perfectly normal (good?) memory and imagine your children have of you with details or context they had not been aware of, internalised, or have simply forgotten.
What do you want?
You want to be remembered?
If you’re present in people’s life, you will be remembered for how you were at that time, try to be your best and present, especially when people are making memories: holidays, celebrations, childhood, out of the ordinary events.
You want to be remebered by people that barely know you or have never really known you?
Check your ego, time to go on a diet.
You want to control your image well past your expiration day?
What is wrong with you? Let it go, the time is now, always now, never tomorrow.
But what do I know?
Do as you want, but you might find, when looking over from the next life, a big pile of your belonging is sitting down the road, ready for the garbage man to pick it up on its shift, don’t get too upset, you might have put out a similar box, or two, when it was your time to preserve the legacy…
Update: xIre has a good take on this.