Legacy

So recently I've been thinking about legacy. I should first define what I mean by legacy to avoid confusion; essentially it is something that will outlast me. Something that I can consider a gift to the world. This isn't a new topic of thought for me, but I have been giving it slightly more thought for a couple of reasons I shall discuss later.

I have asked myself why leaving a legacy is so important to me on several occasions and have come to the conclusion that it's just one of the few romanticised notions I allow myself to divulge in now. It could even be attributed to my religious upbringing in opposition to my stark atheism as an adult. Let me explain that: As a child I was raised to believe in life after death and that life is a test to see whether you get into heaven, hell or purgatory. Now I realise that is utter tosh I know that once I die, I am dead. That's it. Kapeesh. I'm not going to do anything after I die but that doesn't mean I have to be forgotten. 

I think that's actually one of my biggest fears, dying and being lost to the annums of time like countless people before me. I want to be in that minuscule number of people who are remembered long after they die, and the even smaller number that are remembered for good reasons. Let's be clear don't want a statue in bronze, and I'm trying very hard not to convey that what this boils down to is an exercise in narcissism, because that's exactly what I would read it as, but I want to leave my mark on this world... well, maybe not this world.

One of the reasons I've been thinking about this is (alongside Catalogue, for those of you who have read a couple of my other posts) Mars One. This is, in it's very basic version, the plan to send people to populate Mars. Sounds cool right? Well, to me it does. I could genuinely be a named part of human history. Now, applications don't open until late this year, but I shall be keeping an eye on this one.