You can't take it with you
But you can leave something behind.
I’ve reached Montaigne’s nineteenth essay[1], That to philosophise is to learn to die. He seems to have been a little obsessed with death so that the essay is like his own version of the Consolation of Philosophy.
I remember when I was a child that I thought I’d live forever. I knew even then that I wouldn’t, but death was such a remote idea, even after my grandma died, that immortality didn’t seem so unlikely. When I was a little older, I can recalling believing that there was nothing after death, which seemed more comforting than a belief in an afterlife which might be rather unpleasant. Perhaps it was the nascent atheist in me that was thinking such a thing.
It hasn’t been until fairly recent years that I’ve been thinking about death again. It comes as a bother that I’ve found myself approaching middle age without feeling that I’ve achieved anything in life. The closest I come to such an achievement is my PhD thesis which will continue to gather dust on the shelves of the John Rylands Library while I continue to gather dust in my grave after death. But I think of my thesis as a rather mediocre thing, having little genuine academic merit or value. I recall looking at it a few years after I submitted it and thinking that it was rather badly written. There are also a couple of academic articles, which may end up being my sole enduring legacy to the future.
Perhaps such things are enough even if I’d rather leave something more substantial so that my death isn’t just another anonymous statistic.
What else have I done in life? I’ve written more than one tale that would be equivalent in length to a novel. It more or less started when I was fourteen, but the tales from my adolescence no longer survive to the best of my knowledge. On my first website I published a sitcom called Kit Marlowe, P.I., which still survives on at least one archiving site, and may be another legacy to the future. My main blog is another legacy since I have no idea what might eventually happen to it.
For many people, their legacy is children, by which they satisfy the biological imperative to continue the survival of the species. But I’ll never bequeath any such thing to posterity and do not particularly care that I don’t. I like children only when they’re someone else’s; otherwise, they’re not part of my world and I’d either spend too much time on them to the detriment of my own time or too little time on them to the detriment of their upbringing. Besides, children aren’t an immutable creation since you can only ruin their lives so much before they start ruining their lives themselves. At that point, they cease to be yours.
I, on the other hand, would much rather leave behind something that could only be mine such as a novel or body of writing. I don’t have any overwhelming desire for fame. I expect that if anything I’ve published online survives for any great length of time, it’ll probably never be read, or only be read by chance. Again, that doesn’t bother me. When I consider the vagaries of such a fate further, I’d only be bothered if such a relic ended up being used in the wrong way so that I was misrepresented or my words were used by people whose views were contrary to mine. It’d be invidious to find my words used to argue in favour of Intelligent Design.
I think that if I had to say what notice I’d want to leave behind, it’d be that I was intelligent and modest, and that my writing was readable and, at times, humorous. I doubt whether I’ll ever be judged as profound or innovative, which, I like to think, is a euphemistic description for a writer who is obscure and unintelligible, but whose writing no one dares to criticise. Nonetheless, if my legacy is my writing, I would like to be remembered for something I published, a fate which, though not impossible, is unlikely. Since I’m not a celeb nor likely to write anything of sufficient quality in a genre which would be purchased by sufficient numbers of people, my commercial viability is low to non-existent. Besides, writing a novel is hard work, let along writing well.
As for the means of my death there is, genetically, a chance that it’ll be MND, a fate which would place the most irritating restrictions on me – mens sana in corpore aegro. The converse would be just as unappealing – mens insana in corpore sano. Although the decay of mind and body is to be expected as I age, it would be thoroughly disagreeable to be left a dribbling imbecile in a body with limited functionality. I’d much rather go to gescæphwile, felahror like Scyld Scefing, though that doesn’t mean I want to get run down by a bus tomorrow. I’d also like to avoid going at an awkward moment. I don’t mean a Stephen Milligan moment with a pair of stockings and a plastic bag over my head, but I mean a moment when something that I’d prefer to be completed was left unfinished. Of course, that’s not always possible, and I won’t be around to be peeved about it.
And there’s the thing. I’m not going to be around anyway so that my posthumous reputation or complete oblivion are, therefore, one and the same thing. I’d merely be joining the club of millions of anonymous humans who have gone before me. I don’t even like clubs.
Notes
1. In modern editions, this is the twentieth essay; the fortieth of Florio and Cotton’s translations has been promoted to the fourteenth, although I don’t know why. I’ve been trying to read my way through one translation or another of the Essay, but I find my interest flagging at the length of it. Brevity is the soul of wit, and Montaigne wasn’t being witty.
I’ve reached Montaigne’s nineteenth essay[1], That to philosophise is to learn to die. He seems to have been a little obsessed with death so that the essay is like his own version of the Consolation of Philosophy.
I remember when I was a child that I thought I’d live forever. I knew even then that I wouldn’t, but death was such a remote idea, even after my grandma died, that immortality didn’t seem so unlikely. When I was a little older, I can recalling believing that there was nothing after death, which seemed more comforting than a belief in an afterlife which might be rather unpleasant. Perhaps it was the nascent atheist in me that was thinking such a thing.
It hasn’t been until fairly recent years that I’ve been thinking about death again. It comes as a bother that I’ve found myself approaching middle age without feeling that I’ve achieved anything in life. The closest I come to such an achievement is my PhD thesis which will continue to gather dust on the shelves of the John Rylands Library while I continue to gather dust in my grave after death. But I think of my thesis as a rather mediocre thing, having little genuine academic merit or value. I recall looking at it a few years after I submitted it and thinking that it was rather badly written. There are also a couple of academic articles, which may end up being my sole enduring legacy to the future.
Perhaps such things are enough even if I’d rather leave something more substantial so that my death isn’t just another anonymous statistic.
Mr Bamboo. Born 19—; died 20—. Body found approximately seven months after death in good condition. Clearly of no interest to rats.
What else have I done in life? I’ve written more than one tale that would be equivalent in length to a novel. It more or less started when I was fourteen, but the tales from my adolescence no longer survive to the best of my knowledge. On my first website I published a sitcom called Kit Marlowe, P.I., which still survives on at least one archiving site, and may be another legacy to the future. My main blog is another legacy since I have no idea what might eventually happen to it.
For many people, their legacy is children, by which they satisfy the biological imperative to continue the survival of the species. But I’ll never bequeath any such thing to posterity and do not particularly care that I don’t. I like children only when they’re someone else’s; otherwise, they’re not part of my world and I’d either spend too much time on them to the detriment of my own time or too little time on them to the detriment of their upbringing. Besides, children aren’t an immutable creation since you can only ruin their lives so much before they start ruining their lives themselves. At that point, they cease to be yours.
I, on the other hand, would much rather leave behind something that could only be mine such as a novel or body of writing. I don’t have any overwhelming desire for fame. I expect that if anything I’ve published online survives for any great length of time, it’ll probably never be read, or only be read by chance. Again, that doesn’t bother me. When I consider the vagaries of such a fate further, I’d only be bothered if such a relic ended up being used in the wrong way so that I was misrepresented or my words were used by people whose views were contrary to mine. It’d be invidious to find my words used to argue in favour of Intelligent Design.
I think that if I had to say what notice I’d want to leave behind, it’d be that I was intelligent and modest, and that my writing was readable and, at times, humorous. I doubt whether I’ll ever be judged as profound or innovative, which, I like to think, is a euphemistic description for a writer who is obscure and unintelligible, but whose writing no one dares to criticise. Nonetheless, if my legacy is my writing, I would like to be remembered for something I published, a fate which, though not impossible, is unlikely. Since I’m not a celeb nor likely to write anything of sufficient quality in a genre which would be purchased by sufficient numbers of people, my commercial viability is low to non-existent. Besides, writing a novel is hard work, let along writing well.
As for the means of my death there is, genetically, a chance that it’ll be MND, a fate which would place the most irritating restrictions on me – mens sana in corpore aegro. The converse would be just as unappealing – mens insana in corpore sano. Although the decay of mind and body is to be expected as I age, it would be thoroughly disagreeable to be left a dribbling imbecile in a body with limited functionality. I’d much rather go to gescæphwile, felahror like Scyld Scefing, though that doesn’t mean I want to get run down by a bus tomorrow. I’d also like to avoid going at an awkward moment. I don’t mean a Stephen Milligan moment with a pair of stockings and a plastic bag over my head, but I mean a moment when something that I’d prefer to be completed was left unfinished. Of course, that’s not always possible, and I won’t be around to be peeved about it.
And there’s the thing. I’m not going to be around anyway so that my posthumous reputation or complete oblivion are, therefore, one and the same thing. I’d merely be joining the club of millions of anonymous humans who have gone before me. I don’t even like clubs.
Notes
1. In modern editions, this is the twentieth essay; the fortieth of Florio and Cotton’s translations has been promoted to the fourteenth, although I don’t know why. I’ve been trying to read my way through one translation or another of the Essay, but I find my interest flagging at the length of it. Brevity is the soul of wit, and Montaigne wasn’t being witty.
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