On Being Immortal

There is a deep seated need in each one of us to be remembered. We may not acknowledge it, we may even laugh at someone who boldly states it but it is there, in the centre of our hearts.We seek it all the time, desperate to leave a piece of ourselves in the form of a memory in someone else's life; a photograph immortalized by the internet; a song we sang off key; a family video of us just goofing around; a blog we used to write which will be preserved for eternity no matter how long it has lain dusty. This is the reason we suffer anguish, when the computer crashes and leaves us a wreckage of our beloved collection of photographs and videos; when the internet goes off and you realise that the draft you were writing was not saved. We have become hardened by the time we have spent on this earth, developing into a civilization. We no longer trust the human memory, how much can it take anyway? There are too many of us, we reason, not everyone will be remembered. We doubt our own memories too when we suddenly find that we can't remember the dates of important events in our lives or even the most important moments themselves.

So you see we are not really to blame to take advantage of the advancements of our race to try and preserve a piece of ourselves, the best and the brightest ones so that when we are gone, they will live on. We are scared to imagine the lives of our ancestors who we know nothing about. We wonder if we are making the same mistakes they once made, because we have no way to know their stories. Sure we have a history, that can teach us the futility of war and the importance of being human but its never personal enough to make us sit up and take notice. We can think of people from history in third person but we can't imagine ourselves in their place because we can't really feel it. It is important therefore to be remembered for exactly who we were so that our future generations can look back and really know us.

Of course I may just be romanticizing it all and giving it more weight than it deserves. But I have to believe that the whole world has not just taken leave of its senses to spend such time and effort to make themselves immortal. Maybe it is actually the most important thing we are ever going to do and therefore worth the effort and the time we spend.

Or maybe I'm just rambling as usual...