Legacy

Some of us feel the drive to leave a legacy. Whether it began as instinct, was taught or decided at a random point in time, that active drive is in them.

I feel drive for a lot of things, but leaving a legacy isn't one of them. I am not implying that it is silly to want to do so, it just honestly isn't on my list. After all, without those people we wouldn't have some really incredible things, from books to organizations to foundations, etc... I will say that I find some legacy-leavers to be a bit arrogant in intention - those people who "want all boys" so they can carry on the family name... what is that all about? Pride, perhaps? Or those who just know they are "making the world a better place" by living in it, so they'd better leave a little something in memoriam. Maybe I don't understand it, but it just seems gross.

Having said all that, it has made me consider how I would like to be remembered. Does this make me arrogant? Wasn't my intention, I do apologize if it does. At any rate, I do not daydream about an incredible funeral with the flowers and the church and the people in it just so. I do not actually give a shit about what happens to my physical body after I die, as long as my sister and my mother feel comfortable with it. (After all, we all know the aforementioned wingding is more for the living that we leave than our expired selves, no?) And if no one is to think of me once I am gone, than that will be that and I will still have no problem with it. What I will say is that if I am remembered, in some dream land, this would be the best scenario:

I want to be remembered as a writer (I am sick to the teeth of people only knowing me for my painting and would - truth be told - just as soon have them not know me at all). Provided they can fathom it, I want the people who I love to really remember just how much I love them and to know that it was very real. When they watch good stand up comedy I want them to think of me, the same goes for whenever they hear a killer Byrne lyric or bass line by the Stones.

As far as specific personality traits, I have marked the ability to make others laugh as a pretty great accomplishment. Right up there with it would doubtlessly be my compassion. I only really realized this when I was in a fight with a significant other (someone who surely should know you very well) and he told me that I "obviously just don't care". Never before - or again - have I ever been left so pearl-clutchingly speechless. It takes a lot to shock me, it's just not typically in me to react in an extreme manner. But this? This was so clearly ridiculous that I had no way to properly respond to it. It is along the lines of when someone implies that I am stupid - what am I to say? Other than a well-placed "Am not!", I suppose the only thing I could think to do would be to recite English literature. Or perhaps do long-division. Neither really proving how smart I am in the way that I would actually care about proving.

The killer thought (in my opinion) that I am ultimately left with after all of this is:

Those who know me - even those who know me best - have known me in a way I could never know myself. I cannot watch myself be, react, live. Not even in a Truman-esque scenario where cameras would roll on me throughout the day - I would know they were on me and likely behave differently as a result. Not to mention the aforementioned "those who know me" have not known me in my most raw form. They do not have my thought process to truly see where the initiation of my actions were born. They even have their own psyches and thought processes to filter me through before they are even able to come to a conclusion about me. Maybe I am not at all the person I think I am. Perhaps I think I am far better person than I really am, as that would be undeniably human of me.

Like I said; this is all just "best-case-scenario" stuff. Obviously people will remember me the way they will/want to/have to. Which, of course, is fine. I need not make my mark on this planet.