If you speak English, it is highly likely that you quote Shakespeare on an almost daily basis. It is difficult to understand the impact the playwright had on the language. Let me just say that it isn’t the Queen’s English. A friend sent me this video a few months ago and it gives you a glimpse of the impact a man who lived over 400 years ago still has on us today.
As I considered William’s legacy, I wondered how he would feel about people still reading and quoting him today. And I suspect he’d be proud of the recognition but that it wouldn’t matter that much to him. I tried to imagine how I would feel if I knew people four Centuries from now would be reading my articles, and I was surprised to realise I wouldn’t care at all. It is difficult to have any kind of connection with something that happens 400 years from now.
There seems to be a window on how far beyond our own lives we care about being recognised or remembered. We seek recognition for the work we’ve done in our own lifetime, and maybe hope for our children’s generation to remember us. However, beyond that, things become murky. We care less about what people think of us beyond our children’s lives. It is difficult to occasion any interest in what people who don’t exist yet think of us.
Leave a legacy
It seems to me that we want to impress people within and slightly beyond our own lifetime with our achievements. However, lineage elicits a different need that enjoys a longer time frame. We need our lineage to continue beyond the period in which we wanted recognition for the work we’ve done. We might not care all that much what our grandchildren or their children thought of us, but we seem to care that they exist. And that they prosper – they’re family after all.
However, when we think bigger than 15, 20 generations into the future. If we go five billion years into the future the world looks a little different. The world will end when the sun runs out of fuel and enters its red giant phase. It will expand and engulf all the planets that are nearest to it. It is still uncertain if the sun will engulf and dissolve the earth or if it will stop short and merely vaporise all the rock and leave only the planet’s iron core. Either way, all life on earth will end and even the works of Shakespeare will be forgotten.
When you consider that everything will end. That even the universe will ‘die’ in either a big crunch, rip or freeze, the idea of a person’s legacy or of being remembered seems meaningless and almost ludicrous. At this scale of thinking, our lives become infinitesimally small and utterly meaningless.
The closed system of the universe
The universe is a closed system. Everything that existed at the point of the Big Bang exists today; nothing was added, and nothing was removed. When people say that we are made from the same stuff as the stars, it is completely true. All of us, in our entirety, were there when the Big Bang happened. It took billions of years for the elements to combine to make us who we are today. So, every element in our bodies has a direct connection to the very first moments the universe came into existence.
99% of our bodies are made up of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and calcium. And each of these elements is on loan to us. Whatever we might want to believe, eventually the universe will take these back and we will end. We don’t own our bodies, or ourselves, or who we are. Even the energy that makes up our consciousness and our thoughts were there in the beginning. The energy that carries our thoughts, those electrical impulses that light up the neurons in our brains were released in those very first moments when the Big Bang happened.
In the bigger scheme of things our lives are brief moments where elements and energy combine to give us these few years that we call life, and then it all gets taken back, broken down, and redistributed. Which, in some sense means we have always existed and will always exist. Even when the universe dies, all of us, even the energy that created the electricity that were our thoughts will still exist in some form.
So, is life meaningless? Is leaving a legacy, pointless?
In the bigger scheme of things the question, ‘is life meaningless’ would have to be answered with ‘yes’. Which, in turn, makes leaving a ‘legacy’ a pointless as well.
However, despite everything appearing meaningless, and at the risk of all of us becoming nihilists, there is a great privilege in being loaned our lives, for however brief a moment, in this cosmic foreverness. And I think the way we’ve been created carries significance in helping us understand how we are meant to live, and what we were designed to do.
Humans have, from what I can tell, three defining features. The first is that we have myriad senses. And before you write back to me and tell me we have only five, read this and think about it. We were designed to experience the world, to interact with it, to be in it and get our hands dirty in the mud of existence.
The second is that we have emotions, not only were we designed to experience, but we have also been given the power to interpret the world. Our feelings help us interpret and process our experiences. It makes experiencing the world a physical act, something that happens inside us. Not only to us.
And the third defining characteristic is that we have consciousness. As humans we are aware of ourselves, we know we’re alive. We can think and communicate with one another. We need consciousness and thought to construct the stories and ideas we have about our lives. And in sharing ideas we can build relationships and societies.
We have an idea of what is me, of what is you, and of what is possible, and it is this ability that allows us to cooperate and thrive.
Don’t worry about your legacy. Rather, be remembered for how you lived
Based on the above, it is almost obvious that we’re designed to do with this loan we’ve received from the universe. We are meant to experience as much of existence as we can.
If someone loans you a car you don’t just sit in it and roll the windows up and down. Instead, you drive it because that’s what cars are intended to do. If our bodies are on loan and have been designed to experience and feel and connect, then we should use them for that purpose. We should see and hear as much as we can, feel as many emotions as we can bear, and connect with as many humans as we can meet.
If your body and mind are on loan, drive them as far, as fast, and as brutally as you can. Know what it is like to suffer, to be happy, to love and be loved. Know what it is like to produce great ideas, to learn. Experience the ocean, snow, sunburns, and sunsets, humidity and the arid dessert air. See from the top of mountains and climb down into valleys. Run, crawl, jump and fly if you can. Use your body as a tool and be reckless with your emotions. Toy with insanity and experiment with boredom.
And, in the process, through all that you experience, get to know yourself, who you are. Because the better you know yourself, the more you will do those things that bring your life meaning. And the bigger and more valuable your life will feel, to you.
But be aware; when you start thinking about leaving a legacy, or something for others to remember you by, stop. Think about the experience the process of leaving a legacy will bring to your life. Would doing the things that might allow you to leave a legacy give you an experience you need to have in your life? If not, don’t do it.
Live your life as close to who you are as you can. Future generations might remember you for how you lived. But don’t do things in the hopes that you won’t be forgotten. Because you should live for you, not for some future generation whom you hope will admire what you accomplished.
Because, in the end, the universe will take it all back.
And not one of us will be remembered.