How do you really measure the worth of a person's life?
I mean, I get that everyone is important, and everyone has infinite worth and all, but some people accomplish more in their lives. And I am not ambitious or driven or anything. Don't expect great, important, things from me, because I don't have great, important, dreams.
I know how talented I am. I know how much potential I have. But I also know that I am not going to live up to that potential. I will never be the best at anything, not even close. In fact, it's quite likely that I will never even be successful in the typical sense of the word.
But you know what? I'm really okay with that.
How do you really measure the worth of a person's life?
The contributions they made to art or science or literature or politics? The size of the footprint they left on the minds of the human race? The number of people whose lives they changed?
I sure hope not.
See, my circles are fairly small. I don't know many people, and even out of the people I know, I don't have a deep emotional connection with most of them. My potential for leaving a mark on people's soul is not particularly remarkable.
So how do you really measure the worth of a person's life?
What am I really trying to accomplish here?
I feel like I've been thinking about death a lot lately. Is that morbid? I wasn't trying to be, I've just been wondering about dying. Like what happens to everyone who is left? How long will it take for everyone to forget that I was ever here? Who will come to my funeral? Who would really miss me and who would just get back to living?
I'm sorry, now I feel like I'd better explain something. I really don't want to die or anything. Not right now.
But we're all going to, and I want to figure out what I'm doing here before I'm not here anymore.
"Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long"
"Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That's what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease. I want to leave a mark. But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars....We're as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we are not likely to do either. People will say it's sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it's not sad, Van Houten it's triumphant. It's heroic." -Augustus Waters
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