In Remembrance

Whenever I fly I think about death. I realize it is an irrational fear, that is why I still get on airplanes. However, I think it is beneficial to consider one's mortality before one is immediately confronted with it. Perhaps it was a bad idea to watch What Dreams May Come after flying into Portland this morning though.

Anyway, it got me thinking about how I want to be remembered. Well, not how I want to be remembered specifically. I'll live my life as best I can, and that's when I have some say in how people view me, but after I'm gone not much I can do to change that. But I think I mean the manner in which people remember me.

I have been reading a lot of memorials in The State News (Michigan State's student newspaper), a disturbing number of them really, and each one gushes enthusiastically about how absolutely wonderful the departed was. Now I don't know anyone mentioned in the articles (thankfully [because then I'd be sad they were dead, not because I don't want to know them]), so maybe they are as perfect as they are made to seem, but I tend not to buy it. Maybe just because I'm competitive, I know I'm awesome, but I'm not THAT great.

Be that as it may, I have commented on Facebook before that I want to be so famous that some people say mean things about me after I'm dead. Have you ever noticed that it seems to work like that? Anyway, on a more serious note, I don't really need to be famous, but it does seem to be preferable to be remembered "warts and all." Being cleaned up and edited for content just seems to make you more gone. But I'm dead at this point in the hypothetical, so what business do I have dictating to the living?

Well, that is a rather morbid post! I really do blame flying mostly. I think the fact that I'm not really visiting Corvallis this break is also weighing on my mind, a symbol of the perception of inexorably marching into the future.