Temporary Impact
Realization one: everyone is going to die.
Realization two: everyone inlcudes me.
Mark Manson writes about the inevitability of death and its consequences in the last chapter of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and points out how there are only two reasons for almost anything we do:
- To keep us distracted from the fear of death
- To create something that outlives us
Wheter I build a house and put my name on it, print a book with my name on it, or raise children whose genes have my name on it; my aim is to create a legacy because I know deep down that I’m not going to last, and I hope that my creation lasts somewhat longer.
These attempts at immortality by proxy are at best temporary. No house, company, or empire I raise will last forever. And even if I have dozens of children and they all have dozens of children and so on for hundreds of generations, our species will cease to exist at some point, as will our planet, as will our solar system and our galaxy.
Nothing we do will last.
Still, what we do has an immediate impact on ourselves and those around us. However impermanent our actions might be, in every moment we chose what type of impact that is.