People

[nirinia]

Certain people have profound impact on us, at given points in life. Would they have the same had we encountered them at any other?
An aspect of a person can be enough. A single conversation can leave marks that last for years, or a friendship just a moment. We're never aware of those with the greatest influence on us till they are gone, and their touch revisited - be it as another, a book, film or idea. What once meant something, when revisited means nothing to us - the emotion is gone, and the evocation no longer holds true. Why? Have we changed so much, been influenced by such a number of others, or such a facet of those that we no longer remember what it meant?

Will I be remembered hundreds of years, like Beethoven or Bach, or will I fade like the thousands of anonymous graves?

(And no, I'm not depressed, should you wonder. I am merely a tad pensive.)

Comments

[sleepingsun89.livejournal.com]

True, true.
I've been thinking about the same thing, I just don't remember when. And, I figured that if most people forget me, they never really cared anyway and thus it does not matter. Then again, if that's the reason for them to forget that's quite sad anyway... But I'm not planning on dying xD

[nirinia.livejournal.com]

Good point.

I've an issue about not being remembered, I want to be. I'm not religious and therefore believe there is no soul, nothing more to being human than life and the end we meet in death. I fear oblivion. That there's nothing beyond life is comforting, but then I need to do something to be remembered. Some impact, impression or influence that'll keep me alive in some way or other - if only as a name on a dusty tome in the back of a library.

Not that I'm planning on dying anytime soon, either *g*.

[kriwik.livejournal.com]

That's the sad thing about living. If you don't do anything special for the society, you'll probably just be forgotten. Very few people of those billions who've walked this planet are remembered. Unless you write songs or make paintings, kill a bunch of people, or become the first president in Norway, you'll only be remembered as one of many homo sapiens sapiens, which will be a topic in a history book in some thousand years. However, who do we acutally live for: our selves or others? And you won't notice if you're remembered or not after your death; you're dead. Damn, now you made me pensive too!

[nirinia.livejournal.com]

It is, isn't it? If you're no mass-murderer, exceptional president or groundbreaking genius your deeds die with you. Who you live for is a matter of personal experience, I think. It varies with person, time and experience. I live for myself now - is any teen capable of empathy to the degree required to live for another? - but will I in ten, twenty or thirty years? And no, we won't notice after our death, but we will notice if we have the good luck of growing old and have time to contemplate our life.
In a way, I wish I could change the world, or write something so aggravating I'll be put to death for it. I wish I could think of something so unacceptable society sees it fit to poison me as they did Socrates, or Wilde.