What will you be remembered for?
image: shapeshift
Tell me something: what will you be remembered for?
Let me surround this question with irresistible reasoning. The Mayans, now they are remembered for stepped pyramids in what are presently jungles, complicated mathematics and also for disappearing from the face of the earth without a trace. The Spanish at the time of Phillip II as dogmatic hysteria prone bigots, if you feel that’s harsh read some of the works of Sepulveda, their spin doctor at the time, to have your eyes opened. The Romans at the collapse of the Empire as feeble, weak and unworthy of their heritage. The British at the height of their Empire as ruthless power brokers. The Germans of the 1920s and 30s as somewhat gullible and susceptible to fanaticism.
Whether we like the idea or not, and yes there are exceptions to every rule, history views events, places and people with a very precise sextant that dismisses the grey areas mercilessly.
It begs the question, how will our age be viewed by those who look back on it? Will we be seen as responsible, enlightened or developed? Are we to be the Generation Xers, the Me Generation, the post war baby boom first trans-global community emancipated from the tedium of national boundaries? Or will we be seen by history as something else? Americans call the generation of men and women who rallied to the call of resistance to fascism in the 1940s and who paid, in many instances, the ultimate sacrifice, the Great Generation. What will we be?
Narrow this down to the personal, how will you be seen when you have gone? Shift the temporal aspect and ask yourself, how are you seen now? How would you want to be seen? What would you like the abiding view others have of you to be?
Where do you see yourself to be limited in your expression of the hopes and ambitions that you would wish to fulfil? Here is the killer blow, history views that which is passed, the defining characteristic of history is that it is a done deal, it’s gone, events that have graced the stage of human affairs have taken their bow and been relegated to the already as opposed to the yet to be. You are still here, if you’re reading this, you are not yet history but very much in the here and now with the ability to define the as yet unappeared.
History will view you perhaps as a big noise, perhaps not. The ace in your hand is that you are here now and still have the option to choose. Exercise your option well.