What Remains of a Person

From time to time, a thought invites itself into my mind, as it does into all our minds: the thought of what I have left behind, what I am leaving behind, and what will remain of me when I am no longer here. In truth, it is not always a welcome visitor. We usually cherish life and have so many plans, yet we know that with every hour the end of our existence draws nearer, without knowing when it will come.

So: What, then, will remain of you?

I say: much, and more besides, whatever your life may be like. What were you before you came to be? Your mother's egg, your father's seed. Within them were parts of their mothers and fathers, their foremothers and forefathers. The force behind this whole transformation was the plants and animals that existed long before you. They, in turn, existed because of the biological material of other animals and plants long before them. After you were born, you continued to take nourishment from other animals and plants so that you could grow and develop. In this way, you too may become an ancestor to your descendants, enabling them to live and becoming a physical part of them.

But I cannot have children. Perhaps I do not even want them.

Perhaps it will console you to know that you do not have to do anything. The natural order of things will take care of it. Sooner or later, your body will return to earth, water, and air. It will become nourishment for other organisms and part of further transformations. In this way, you will become part of thousands of things, just as you arose from thousands of things. They will be your descendants.

Part of the flower whose scent I breathed in today may once have been a great king of an ancient realm. Part of the butterfly that just passed me by may once have been a piece of a beggar from that same realm. Can I even say that I am the same person today as I was a year ago, a month ago, or a single day ago? Every day, thousands of my cells die and leave my body, while I take in nourishment from thousands of sources to create new ones. After my death, it will merely be another stomach, another root, that continues this transformation.

But that will no longer be you. You will no longer live or feel.

No, it will not be a continuation of my consciousness as I know it today. No transformation of matter can undo that loss. But who is this “I” whose loss I fear? I may spend one part of my life chasing a career, another meditating on mountaintops, and another wandering carefree through the world. To someone who watched me throughout, it might seem as though I had lived three lives and died twice between them.

And are not my consciousness and identity shaped by the people and things around me? Does the teacher who taught me to read not live on in me, though he is already dead? A hero's selfless act may inspire a poet to write a poem and, through it, live on in generations to come. The sight of a meadow in bloom at sunset may remain in my memory for years, though many winters have passed and the flowers have long since died. Just as my consciousness is woven from thousands of influences, so I too, through my life and my death, touch thousands of other lives.

But perhaps I am incapable of leaving anything remarkable behind.

Do people, plants, or animals need only remarkable, rare, and extraordinary things in order to live? Quite the opposite. They need water, sunlight, air, and simple nourishment: things utterly ordinary, yet indispensable. It is the ordinary that sustains our world and everything in it.

And who, after all, decides what is remarkable? A song, a painting, or another work of art may touch one person in a place whose existence its creator never even suspected, while leaving another unmoved.

We cannot foresee all the future effects of our actions, much less expect them to affect everyone in the same way. Who, then, can judge what is or is not remarkable, what is or is not worthy of becoming what remains of us? Nothing remarkable need remain of a person for much to remain. The ordinary things they received and passed on may be as indispensable as water, air, or light.