In This Life
My best friend and I often talk about theoretical scenarios. Being the bright rays of sunshine that we are, we more often than not meander down morbid roads.
We were talking about Christina Grimmie and her unfortunate death and how her legacy has been immortalized because of the internet. Her songs will be heard decades from now -crosses fingers- by people who might not even know she’s gone till they look her up on Wikipedia. She has left behind a musical legacy and in people’s hearts, she’ll never die.
Some of you are gonna snigger behind a closed fist or perhaps openly burst out laughing. I used the word legacy to describe a body of work that cannot compare to the likes left behind by Michael Jackson or David Bowie. Here’s the thing, though. I enjoy her music. And whether it be one song or twenty, anything left behind that has the ability to bring joy to even one human being for a few minutes is worthy of being termed a legacy.
I told the Mushroom that if (when?) I pass away, she’s to do what best friends are supposed to and remove my internet presence. Remove my facebook accounts, my emails, shut down everything out there and erase as much of my life from cyberspace as she possibly can. I’m sure Big Brother has a data vault somewhere where everything is permanently stored but at least on the public interwebs, I will cease to exist.
She refused to do so and at first I thought it was because she wanted to preserve my online legacy (that wasn’t the case) and it got me thinking: do I want a legacy, online or otherwise?
When we die, we die. There isn’t some (proven) afterlife from where we look down on all we have done while sipping pina coladas. We are and then we aren’t. That’s all there is to it. So what’s the point of leaving behind anything?
People want to leave behind children, or books, or works of art or something that others would remember them by. Being remembered after kicking the bucket seems to be a big deal for a lot of people and has featured significantly in history and literature. Just look at any monument created by someone to honor themselves.
I don’t want that for myself. I think all I really want is to have no ragrets while I’m still here. Even if no one remembers the things I have done a mere decade after my passage, I will have walked into the Veil knowing that while I lived, breathed and piloted my fleshy vessel, it was good.
Maybe that’s just my youth talking. I’m sure a lot of people would feel that way. Will I feel this way when I’m eighty three? Will I make it to eighty three? I don’t really know. I don’t think it’s worth thinking about.
Right now I’m just trying not to go to bed at night with any regrets. That’s not too bad, right? Going to bed each night with no regrets?
Who needs a legacy, anyway?
