What about my life really matters and who I matter to?
As a parent and a husband, I matter to my wife, and my kids. I also matter to a small group of friends and blog readers, my employer, my students, the people I owe money to, and the IRS.
As I move into my grandparent years, who will I matter to? I hope to matter a lot to my grandkids. I won't matter as much to my children, because they have lives of their own that will intersect less and less with my life. I would like to believe they will enjoy coming to see me, but it will be an commitment for them to do so.
Who will I matter to as a great-grandparent? I will matter much less to my kids and grandkids, and hopefully I'm not too scary to my great-grandchildren. I may matter to a nursing home staff.
How about being a great-great-grandparent? Will I matter to them? Probably not. I will surely be dead by then, and each generation that comes after me becomes less and less conscious of the details of my life.
So really what do I matter in this world?
What I can say definitely is that the only thing that will matter from my life in the larger scheme of life is that I had sex and the sperm found the egg, united and produced a child.
I have heard it said that sex is hereditary. If your parents didn't have any sex, you won't either.
2 comments:
You have good points there...and I agree for the most part. But I do believe that people who have passed long ago still matter in this world to a lot of people. Simply because of the impact they had on someone else's life and that story has been passed down over the years. You can never be too sure, Jim...someone out there might write a book about how you changed their lives and you could be the next Morrie (from Tuesday's With Morrie)...inspiring people even though you're no longer here physically. I think you will matter to this world long after you have departed it.
There are many who have mattered to me that I have never met and/or have died.
The way I look at it is that this is what we all go through. If our truth lives on beyond us, that is gravy.
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