I can't stop thinking about
memory and
forgetfulness.
I was reading something a while back by someone musing on millennial fever -- the desire shown by some religious folks for the End Times to occur, sooner rather than later. Why, she was wondering, do some people want the end of the world to happen? Do they hate the world, hate people, hate mountains and forests and oceans, hate kittens and thunderstorms and the smell of fresh paint on garage doors?
No, she decided. It wasn't about wanting anyone dead. It wasn't about wanting to punish the guilty. It wasn't even about wanting to see God. It was about not wanting to be forgotten.
See, when you die, your family, your kids, your grandkids, your friends, they all remember you. They talk about things you did, things you said, how good you were at running a business, that time you sank the basket from half-court, the way you'd make them feel better. A generation down the line, and the kids in the family only know you as a faded picture in the photo album, as a name Grandma talks about but who they can't place to a face.
A generation beyond that, maybe two, and no one really remembers you at all.
Sure, there are some whose memories linger. We remember Shakespeare, Caesar, Lincoln, Jesus. But they're exceptions, nothing more. Hell, even having pretty impressive accomplishments of your own won't guarantee that people will remember you. Who was Grover Cleveland's vice president? Who was the seventh French king after Charlemagne? Who accepted the Best Picture Oscar in 1947? Yeah, you can look 'em up, but that's not the same as remembering them, is it? It's not the same as remembering who they were, what they believed, what they loved...
All those billions of people have been forgotten by ensuing generations... because the world didn't end. If you're the last generation before everything gets wiped out, you'll never have to be forgotten. Your ego will never suffer the indignity of being just as forgettable as some random Peruvian peasant or some do-nothing Soviet bureaucrat or some 1840s frontier wife in Colorado. Your greatness, your utter importance, your sheer unbelievable awesomeness will never fade before the passage of time.
But of course, there's a pretty good chance that the world isn't going to end any time soon. Tough times? Sure, those are always possible. But barring unexpected meteor strikes or super-volcanoes, it's a pretty safe bet that the world will just keep on keeping on. God has had more appropriate occasions to turn the planet into a cinder, and he hasn't done it yet. In other words, the smart money says that life will continue on, that the universe won't come to a stop when you do, that future generations will forget you as surely as you've forgotten your thrice-great grandmother.
Is it depressing? Sure, we all want to be remembered -- it's the only kind of immortality most of us can hope for. And it's no fun to contemplate a future where the only record of your existence will be a weathered stamp on a weed-covered tombstone.
However, I think I'm coming to like the idea of being forgotten. For one thing, there's no reason to struggle against the inevitable -- come to grips with it, embrace it, stop fearing it.
But I also like the concept of historical anonymity. It's equalizing, almost liberating. Am I better or worse than a camel driver in 13th century Egypt, than the author of London's best-selling book of 1767, than an elderly woman in Central Africa in the 1600s, than a baby who died of crib death in 1934, than an Ecuadoran teenager programming espionage backdoors into phonechips in 2082?
No. We're all the same. We're the mass of humanity, struggling, failing, dying, fated to be shoveled aside and forgotten by those who come after us. Kings or paupers, we all have oblivion waiting for us. It's the thing we all share, rich or poor, powerful or weak.
I don't have anything more profound to say about the whole thing. Not everything lends itself to profundity, does it?