Do you know what I learned today?
The pursuit of knowledge, of answers, of truth and explanation, is the purpose of our lives on this earth.
We are nothing more than memory. When we walk out of a room, those within stay only in our memory until we see them again. We remain in their memory also.
So when all is said and done, all you can leave here is your memory, the things you did that others will remember. The friend you were, the lover, the parent, the co-worker – these will all exist only in memory, in stories, in photos, in thoughts and emotions. You will be nothing but the memories you etch in the minds of those you meet.
So I ask; are you living your life, considerate of the memory, the legacy, the wonderment you will leave behind? Or are you living it in anticipation of another, better existence?
Do you go forward in your day, consumed with the drive to discover, create and live with joy, or do you occupy a waiting room, expectant that the good things are yet to come?
I sincerely hope not.
The good is here, it is now. Our life’s purpose is not to please a higher being, it is to make a better world for our children, for the coming generation. Our purpose is to seek and discover, to reach beyond our boundaries to the endless unknown. Our purpose is to love and protect.
It stands to reason that we should then focus on creating the so desired paradise in the here and now. After all, the here and now are all we truly have. The future is unknown and unwritten, the past a fluid memory misting around the solid stone of historical fact.
While we continue to inhabit the past and future, we fail to create a legacy to be proud of. We fail to leave the world with a memory of a person so committed to bettering the human condition, they are applauded and remembered for generations.
None of us know where we are going. Though the speculation of our existence after death has raged since we evolved away from Neanderthals to Modern Humans and began to think abstractly. However, is it so much to ask, that instead of fretting about the unknown, we focus on the certainties?
All we are is memory. All we have ever been is memory. What memory are you bequeathing to this place when you leave?
Alicia Wanstall-Burke 
Love this – it reminds me of Eduoard Leve in ‘Suicide’:
‘You remain alive insofar as those who have known you outlive you. You will die with the last of them. Unless some of them have made you live on in words, in the memory of their children. For how many generations will you live on like this, as a character from a story?’
Gorgeous quote… I think about it a lot!