Significance:
the quality of being worthy of attention; importance.
I took this picture on my phone this morning while hunting around the Nashville City Cemetery for Pokestops and Pokemon with my three kids (ages 7, 5 and 3). There were a lot of beautiful headstones and elaborate grave sites. Many had intricate stone, chain, or metal fencing systems surrounding and protecting a family plot. I began to to notice how many of them were really faded, being hundreds of years old. As I walked around these monuments to people long since dead who I now know nothing about, I was struck by this headstone in particular and how it was so worn off as to be completely unreadable:
Our attempts to remain significant after our death are kind of like that gravestone.
As time passes, we will be forgotten and most attempts to remain significant will be worn away. Walking through the cemetery, I couldn't help but think of my parents who have been gone nine years now. It was an interesting experience while explaining to my three-year-old how these stones mark the graves of people who died and attempting to answer her questions on how they died.
When I think about significance and death, if I'm honest with myself, I truly want to cheat death. I want to get onboard with the Ray Kurzweils and Aubrey de Greys of the world. I want to believe our technology will enable us to live for a millennium or more. Maybe that's just another version of religions which teach we'll live forever in heaven.
I'd like to believe I'm going to leave a dent on the universe, I'm going to do something so significant history will remember me in a positive light. Statistically, given the billions of people alive today, that's probably not going to happen. The most I can hope for, I think, is to leave a positive, lasting impression on my kids.
Or maybe that's why I like blockchain technology so much. Maybe that's why I like journaling on Steemit. Maybe I'd like to believe my consciousness, as recorded in the blockchain, will exist forever and won't be worn away by the weather.
Previous #journal entries: 1, 2, 3, 4
