The Vanity Of Leaving Something Behind - How A Yale Man Was Convinced He Had Been Important

John Aldrich had been a man of some import and recognition - businessman, local politician, minor philanthropist - and he thought that he would be well remembered after his death.. In act act of shameless vanity, he wrote his own elegy - a hagiography, really, an overblown, overstated, exaggerated story of an ordinary life in his mind writ large. 

Born in modest circumstances, Aldrich realized his potential from an early age, becoming the youngest Eagle Scout in Ohio Boy Scout history.  There he learned about leadership, responsibility, and concern for others, the foundation for a life of giving... 

 
This cant went on for endless pages despite the editing of his wife who wondered whether her husband had become a bit shaky in his old age.  Yes, he had been a successful man, but nothing to crow about in an age of brilliant entrepreneurs, investors, and men of serious political influence.  This elegy, if published, would scotch any of his ambitions to be remembered fondly. He would be seen only as an old geezer flapping about in his retirement, afraid of dying and hoping that something of him would live on.  This fanciful, insufferably romantic vision of himself would do in whatever legacy he was planning. 

'Please, John', she said after reading a first draft.  Don't do this to yourself'; but he insisted. 

'I've given my whole life to making something of myself, bettering myself, and giving back.  Isn't that worth something?' 

Now, most of us would like to think that we will be endlessly remembered, not exactly on Mt. Rushmore or on the Library of Congress biographical bookshelves, but recognized.  Life cannot be simply metro, boulot, dodo as the French say, or a life of quiet desperation, or worse as Hobbes noted, nasty, brutish, and short. There must be something under the bell curve. 

 

He thought of Harvey Fanning, Yale classmate who had been jailed for financial fraud which when discovered by government investigators, had been uncovered as a criminal genius far surpassing Bernie Madoff and his Jewish Ponzi schemes, Jeffrey Skilling and his Enron ghost investments, and Rudy Kurniawan's colossal wine fakery.

At every reunion stories circulated about Harvey Fanning, more embellished and fantastical with each telling.  Classmates remembered his laundry business, the hearse he bought to transport used refrigerators to sell to freshman, and especially the blue movies that made him thousands, all while serving an apprenticeship in the Naval Reserve. 

No one was surprised at the ingenuity and downright genius of his later schemes.  Why, anyone could make millions on the Street while good ol' Harvey went out on his own and made a bloody fortune. 

Yale men were like that.  The particulars of a man's genius were less important that the brilliance of its execution, and while Harvey was no Davenport, Berkeley, or Stiles - reputable and noteworthy Yale men for whom residential colleges at the university were named - he was certainly one of the class's more memorable graduates. 

 

Many famous men when asked how they would like to be remembered disingenuously reply, “As a good father…loving husband…faithful Christian…compassionate man”. They will go on to say that  of course they hope they have had an influence on jurisprudence, foreign affairs, technology, or social justice, but that will be for history to decide.

Most people, however, will give only a fleeting thought to their legacy.  Either they have stumbled their way through life and know that anything they leave behind is simply a clutter for someone else to put in order; or they are so concerned about where they are going that what remains after them holds no interest.                  

The Death of Ivan Ilyich, a novella by Leo Tolstoy, tells the story of a man who on his deathbed wonders how and why he has come to such an ignominious end? Not only is he facing eternity absolutely alone, but his carefully constructed life, configured to avoid risk, intimacy, responsibility, and entanglement now appears to be meaningless.  

 

His dismissal of personal, professional, or social value has now left him more alone and despairing than he ever had considered.  Once those congenial colleagues who showed him affection, respect, and camaraderie knew of his terminal illness, he became nothing more than an empty office and a position to be filled.  His wife, dismissed and ignored for the entirety of their marriage, could not be expected to show compassion or concern let alone love.

Ivan’s thoughts were not about what his legacy would be, or what people thought of him.  Of that he was certain.  Their estimation of him during his life had been based on the flimsiest of social premises; and the more he reflected on it, the more their expediency resembled his own.  His wife had always been a scratchy, unpleasant woman who nevertheless fulfilled her expected family functions; and if truth be known, he had not been any different.

In his final hours Ivan only wondered how, given his acceptably moral, if not particularly respected behavior, he could find himself at a relatively young age about to die.  He refused to accept the will of God, but could not possibly accept the premise that a random, purposeless, and meaningless Fate had left him so coldly on the curb.

As he approached his end, his obsession with the past faded, and he turned his attention to what was to come.   He did not face death with equanimity but with a feeling of absolute terror.  He was going to die.  His meaningless life would end unceremoniously.  Worse than being extinguished was the thought of nothingness, a frightening void with no lines to shore, no light, no warmth, no points of familiar reference.

In his final moments, he has an epiphany.   “Aha”, he said. “So that’s all”.  Death was coming.  He had been afraid for nothing.

“We all die alone”, Ivan had said when he saw how no one cared whether he lived or died; and how death, the most personal and individual of human events, could be experienced with no one else.  If the ultimate  moment of life had nothing to do with the past, then how could legacy have any importance whatsoever?

John Aldrich was no Ivan Ilyich.  Never a deep thinker, never once a dalliance with the meaning of things, always a happy-go-lucky man of action, he went through life with his share of financial success, women, and a productive marriage; and yet in his later years he became obsessed with legacy.  If he was to spend eternity in nothingness, that was all the more reason for his life to continue on without him, a kind of perennial John Aldrich, whose ideas, humility, humor, and friendship would be as alive as they ever had been. 

It was that thought that prompted the elegy, or rather the long biography intended to be read to the hundreds who would crowd Grace Episcopal Church to mourn his passing but to celebrate his life. It would be an event that shouted, 'He mattered'. 

Of course all but the most hopeless idealistic cannot help but see that whatever ideas, projects, or designs for which they are known become quickly superseded, supernumerary, and irrelevant.  Time marches on. Youth will have its day, and as Buddhists say, “There is no change but change.”  Legacy is irrelevant.

 

In some ways it is a good thing that such philosophical ignorance persists; because thanks to the persistent belief in legacy, everyone benefits from the financial largesse of wealthy industrialists who want everything from hospital wings to museums named after them and whose money creates as much after death as before.

Bishop Berkeley, the famous metaphysician and phenomenologist, asked “If a tree falls in the forest, and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?” If the tree makes no sound, and that anything beyond an individual’s consciousness and perception does not exist, then everything ceases to exist when one dies.  Hence legacy is irrelevant.   Hindus believe that the world is maya or illusion anyway, so such metaphysical arguments have no resonance.  There is no question in their minds that no matter how you slice it, worry about legacy is nothing but pure vanity.

'Just put your things in order, dear', said Jeannette. 'The rest will take care of itself'; but Aldrich was having nothing of it. Why couldn't she realize this was an existential matter, not just some nineteenth hole chatter.

A number of their friends had died recently, and John and Jeannette attended their funerals, listened to orations, offered condolences to the family, and smiled at familiar references to the deceased; but no more than a few months later, it was as if those poor souls had never lived.  Aside from spouses and children, they ceased to exist, and whatever memories of them remained fragmentary and then disappeared. 

The irony of it all was that funeral speaker after speaker talked about their work as desultory and unimpressive as it might have been - an ordinary routine of metro, boulot, dodo in a downtown Washington office setting - and few mentioned essence, humor, desire, frailty, or particular brilliance.  At the end of their lives they were silhouettes vaguely defined, nothing more. 

'I don't want that to be me', John said, 'and that's why I'm jump-starting the process'. 

His wife smiled and brought the subject of Florida again.  'If we have to die, John, why don't we die in a warm place?'.