Palimpsests and Immortality

Palimpsest (noun): A manuscript or piece of writing material on which later writing has been superimposed on effaced earlier writing.


Take a look at a photograph of yourself as a kid.
That's you, isn't it?

Well, yes, it is you. And no, it isn't. Not anymore.
Is there, in fact, any relationship between you and that little kid apart from a genetic one?


Try to imagine looking at yourself through that little kid's eyes.

                                                                  

What do you see? An old dude. A stranger who's a bit daggy-looking. Maybe and uncle or something.

But that freckle-faced little kid is part of you, without the half-century-plus of experience, the overdraft and the cynicism.

Just as your own kids, considering your generous haploid chromosomal contribution to their mother, are also part of you.
And just as your father and your mother, the joint contributors to your genome, are also part of you.

But they aren't you.
What you are is a bunch of genes that make you a palimpsest of all your ancestors, and part of a blueprint for all your descendants.

    




Your forebears are no longer with us, but in a way they still are, through you.
Just as that little kid you once were is still here.

You are the current Bearer and Curator of the family genes.

After some three hundred thousand years of seduction, copulation, conception and parturition (performed with varying degrees of commitment, enthusiasm, panache, coercion, sobriety, legality, and undress), all the hopes and dreams of our ancestors, all they have ever striven for, all they have ever dreamed of and suffered for, rests with you.

So don't let them down.

Live your life in a way that would make them all proud.