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Legacy
01.24.12
Earlier this month my father died. I have no doubt this will prove to be one of the most impactful events in my life. My dad and I were close, alike in many ways, and I considered him one of my best friends. He's left behind a hole that can't be filled.
Since he died I've found myself thinking about the idea of legacy. What do we leave behind? Not long after he died, someone made reference to what my father left me. Not the physical things, but personality traits, hobbies, likes and dislikes, memories, etc.
But the physical cannot be ignored. As my brother and I began sorting through his home we both noted the physical nature of what he left behind. Pictures. Books. Notes. Things. We noted the digital nature of our current existence by comparison. Not an original thought, but it struck us and we found ourselves wondering what we would leave to the next generation, what would they leave behind?
We rely now on digital media that routinely becomes obsolete. The more diligent among us have a backup, either on the Internet or on another physical device, but still digital, still easily disturbed. We've convinced ourselves as a generation that this is as good, as reliable, as a box of photos. And maybe it is. We'll know in 100 years.
How easily are these things lost? How hard are they to pass down?
There is more now. It compounds. And Technology makes it easy to add to. We generate so much digitally now — words, images; conversations, histories — that the next generation can never hope to process it all. And why would they? Will a niece or nephew thirty years from now care what I wrote here, or even know this site existed? It has been a significant part of my life, but does it deserve to last? Likely not. But it makes me wonder how much of what my dad would have liked to pass along is gone.
I imagine future generations will data-mine the past rather than sift through it with dusty fingers. But a digital legacy is easily ignored. But is it also easily preserved? Is that preservation too easy? A reflex instead of a willful act?
Let's not pretend like inertia didn't also rule the past. Something is written down. A picture is taken. these things are put in a box. That box is put in a closet or an attic or a garage. But it is there, as a physical thing, waiting to be confronted, eventually. A digital legacy can be ignored, deleted instantly or lost behind a password no one knows and hasn't the will to break. Now, preservation must become an active struggle. But that effort, obsessive archiving, can also be too much. What, of everything you generate, is worth passing on? How will those left behind know what to keep and what to toss? There is so much.
That's not to say that physical items are immune to the vagaries of meaning and importance. Of the items my brother and I have chosen to discard, how many would my dad have preserved? How much of what we save would he have discarded?
Because he lived in my childhood home, I'm finding that many of the things I'm claiming for preservation are mine anyway. Items left when I moved out. Reminders of childhood. Other items are clearly his. Clearly meaningful. Painfully symbolic now. There are the everyday items which we are now pouring meaning into, filling up with memories we can't bear to part with.
Every day I have things I'd like to tell my dad. I used to save these up for our conversations. Now they have no place to go. The future is as easily deleted as the past.
SAH
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If I could start over, I'd still have no idea what I would want to do. submitted by SAH
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