If most people are honest, I think they would admit they'd like to leave something behind by which to be remembered. Reality dictates however that centuries from now, most people won't remember who we are or what we did. Some people may frit their lives away because they believe what Shakespeare wrote about life being a poor player who struts and frets his hour on stage only to be heard no more. I kind of like Whitman's notion that in all of the hubbub, each of us may contribute a verse.
By the time I was old enough to realize what would echo into eternity, I had already been through some things that would echo dissonance in my future. They're not the black marks of eternity per se, but there is a certain stigma that comes with having been divorced, for example, from which I cannot really escape. As a matter of fact, it did happen, but that is no longer the truth of who I am nor the verse that I choose to contribute. It did however help me realize that I needed to take control and choose a verse before the verses chose me.
I suppose in part that's why I started writing this blog. Rather than wait until other people put words into my mouth or spread libelous stories about me, I decided to go on record and let people know me. Among the most interesting comments I have received anonymously to this blog are the following: "The great part about your writings, Doug, is your honesty..." and "I love how you take the honest look at yourself, even though it's painful sometimes...". I am me. I have to live with that. You have to live with yourself.
Most of the people who have ever lived decided rather than contribute a verse to the play of life that they would give in to their base animal instincts. Like De Tocqueville wrote, they seem preoccupied with "petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut out their lives", which is precisely what the powers of this world desire. They seek to keep us from doing either what we ought or what we like, staging a marionette show that soothes the somnambulent public. I sat on the couch this morning reading scriptures before I left for work and considered just how mainstream lascivious and licentious behavior seems today. I honestly think in their effort to drown out the routine and hardship of mortality with intoxicating substances and relationships most people forget that overindulgence and fornication are actually sins. We have no need of more verses on the subject of slaking lusts. History is resplendent with that, and it shows us that such behavior is common.
Consequently, I think most people pass ignominiously into the night even when they think they're making a name for themselves. You have to remember that half the people are below average despite what we think. Someone once wrote that "The heroes are remembered for their victories, and the failures are remembered because they tried, but the vast majority are forgotten because they are average". I think that's why my students are so offended by a grade of "C", because we fear being average. In a world that venerates wickedness and subsidizes sloth, average is ironically more praiseworthy than ever. So many people no longer try or they involve themselves in one-up-manship about things that do not become a man. I will confess that I have made mistakes, but I did not let them make me.
Sometimes I wonder what kind of verse I will leave behind. Until recently, I believed that my greatest contribution to the world would be through my family, through children that I would raise and to whom I would bequeath my legacy. I am no longer convinced that I have any prospects of posterity, and so it falls to me to consider in what other way I may contribute my verse. I console myself that I have never even seen marijuana let alone done any drugs and that there are no bastard children anywhere who can claim my DNA and that I when I tell someone that I love them I mean it. Several years ago, when I moved into this house, I started to wonder if I would become the Don Quixote of the 21st Century, tilting at the windmills of injustice, intemperance, impropriety, and immorality. A few people volunteered to serve as my Sancho Panza, but none of them are there when the time comes to joust.
Years ago, I told my best friend about my Final Directive. On my tombstone, I just want the initials VIR beneath my name (indicating "man of honor"). It is my hope and my aim that maybe one person after I die will think of me and say as Anne says in "The King and I" of me: "I don't think any man was as good as he could have been, but this man tried." So far, that particular King of Siam is a myth, but if I can become that for real, that would be a verse worth contributing.
As you go forth today and tomorrow consider what verse you would like to contribute. As you make choices from there, consider if they actually lead to the verse you designed. You see, we tell on ourselves by the things we actually do what really matters to us. You can tell me all day long that you think people should be a certain way, but if you don't walk the walk, I know you don't really believe that. Someone dear to me once asked me what I would do in her particular circumstances. I told her that I only knew what I would like to think I would do, and that only if I were put in that position would I know what kind of man I truly was.
For now, I'll do the best I can to be the best Doug I can be. Whose opinions should I have if not mine? Whose values should I have if not mine? Whose life should I live if not mine? You may not like it or join it or want anything to do with it, but in the end each of us must live with the person we have decided to be. The verse we contribute will echo into eternity, and each of us will be known by it. I am the one who writes my own story. I decide the person I'll be. What kind of person will you be? Will you be inversed or well-versed?
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