Whenever I hear about baseball players from the 1800s, I feel sad. Take Ross Barnes. He has the third highest single-season batting average of all time in the MLB, but I’ve never even heard of the guy. He would have been a giant in his day, an icon, a baseball hero. There must have been parades in his honor; his name would have been plastered across the newspapers. But you know what? I’d never even heard of him before last week.
So it really makes me wonder how long it takes your legacy to die, how long it takes for your name to mean nothing, how many generations pass before the people just don’t care about your accomplishments. I had NO idea that John Tyler was our 10th president. Or Franklin Pierce (Number 14), James Buchanan, Rutherford B. Hayes or William Harding. And they were our PRESIDENTS. Commander in Chief, Leader of the Free World, all that good stuff. And as for the vice presidents? I know Gore and Cheney, but that’s it.
So is my life meaningless? I can make an impact on as many people as I please, but eventually I’ll die and they die, and even if they their kids about me, those kids will die too. At some point, everything I might ever accomplish in the rest of my life will mean nothing. And that kind of sucks.
And death, hoo boy. I’ve never been able to just take things on faith, and while it’s great to believe there’s an after life, and that would sure makes things a lot easier, I just can’t make that leap. And I know that scientifically speaking, when my brain shuts down, when the last synapses dies away, there will be nothing. Nothing. Not even darkness to see, silence to hear. Nothing. And that kind of sucks too.
1 comment:
that was your monologue right?
i disagree. I think that your life is not meaningless and that we are here to make as much of a difference as we can. Our main objective should not be to be famous or to have people know your name 200 years from now, but to be the best people we can be while we have the chance, and not take for granted what we have.
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