How important is being remembered anyway?

To those that know me it is no secret that I have had my share of close calls with my health. I was diagnosed very young with what was supposed to be (prior to new medications and incredible technology breakthroughs) a short lifespan. Almost instantaneously upon receiving that diagnosis the only thing that meant anything to me was how would my parents survive losing me? How would my sisters react? Would my father be sad for the rest of his life after losing his father at eight years old and now his son? Then I realized that I could ease their feelings of loss by having children and leaving a piece of myself behind to be remembered by and making children became my obsessive task. And then I started to think.

Of course I did get married almost immediately and planned for the worst. I dedicated more time to my children than most people spend with their own children in a lifetime, never mind just in their children's youth. I was that guy who hugged his puppy way too much. As medical breakthroughs kept me going one decade after the other even though I was not supposed to live but a few months, As my children became teen agers and "didn't need me or want me much anymore" I started again thinking what am I going to be remembered by? It seemed so incredibly important, as if the world was going to end (and it might of any day at least for me) and I had to figure out what my purpose here in the world is. And again what will I be remembered for?

I started studying the people that we seemed to remember with great admiration and they were family members who had already passed, great scientists, poets, musicians, athletes, inventors, explorers, writers, really people from every aspect of life who had left a great work behind that influenced society. But I was no great scientist, writer, or anything else. I was just a man, a father, and a son. And then I started to think more. I was informally studying quantum physics, the scientific theories of all the great theoretical physicists, the findings ta the Cern Particle Collider and the Brookhaven labs projects, even Einstein and Hawkings, the great astronomers and the findings of the astro physicists, pretty much anything having to do with science, math, quantum mechanics, machine learning, artificial intelligence. And the more I studied the more information I was able to correlate from one field of study to the next. Even understanding the quandaries of the scientific studies and the inevitably small to the immense objects in our Universe, or multiverse, string theory, the theory of inflation, and the reasons why the theories of why our Universe is expanding and cooling off.

I continued to study and started to look at chemistry and biology and evolution, even to the most advanced theories on the originations of life. And after seven years of studying eight to ten hours per day (all while I recovered from walking marathons during the day) I came to some new conclusions. The first conclusion I came to was "out of sight out of mind" and yes I know it is a cliche but I realized that generations of my own family members did not seem to care much (other than a school project on family tree's) about their forefathers. Heritage seemed so unimportant in the lives of the young. Even less if they can't remember them. My daughter was only a young girl when my father died and despite the rapport and love between them she has no memory of being with him now, none. It's sad but true. I know that would make him very sad if he were still here. It made me sad, to think only a decade after my father was taken from me from cancer, how long the time in between thinking about him was at times. I mean at first I could not stop thinking about him every minute, and then years went by and it was a few times a day, then it was less and less frequent even though daily.

I realized that as time passes TIME that as much as we were connected to those that have passed the further away our memories seemed to be and the less emotional impact they had on us. I also realized having studied so much and for so long, that not only are we a society that becomes disconnected from our heritage relatively quickly because of the lack of emotional bonds between generations and youth, that over time we were just a photograph and the memory of the still living members of our family who remembered us personally. Those we interact with and those we interacted with. It became depressing. In fact since I doubted my ability to do anything "great" even though I wanted to give back something great to my society, the society that gave me so many more years than my biology would have without the great medical advancements.

I pondered and pondered what I would do. What could I do? And as my knowledge of the small and the super large became more in depth I realized that as the Universe expands or if we completely pollute the earth until we are extinct, or if we have a massive third war, a comet collision, or any other event that would change the earth as we know it, what ever I left behind even if it was great, just would not matter anyway, as I would be forgotten along with the entire history of the human race altogether. Nothing would be left of any of us but dust.

That is when I started to learn about quantum biology and how entangled particles help bird navigate the magnetic field of the earth, and how entangled particles no matter where in the universe could communicate. I started to theorize that all of these scientists, and great mathematicians, the explorers, were all mostly trying to figure out one thing, what is life and what is consciousness and where did it start. They all look at carbon based lifeforms and the elements necessary for life the energy necessary for life scientifically. And then I came up with a theory of my own, one that I am sure I share with most of the people in this world. That scientists are simply looking in the wrong place. They are looking for the energy that binds us, the electromagnetic connections between atoms and quarks and all of the little parts of the littlest pieces of everything.

When they realized that these particles the smallest parts of electrons and protons and all new particles discovered in these particle colliders could be in multiple places at the same time, they became even more confused. Everything they tried to connect and all the theories they tried to prove only proved one thing, that there is so much more we do not know than we do know. My mind does not have an off switch so it just kept computing until I looked at the one thing that seemed to stump Einstein. Einstein called it a spooky action at a distance but what it really was, was that he could not explain how entangled particles were able to communicate faster than the speed of light. Then I started to theorize.

Since we now know that entangled particles in living species work together to generate decisions, what if entangled particles in our brains connected us all, and what if the energy that feeds life and these connections albiet via local chemical reactions in our brains were the result of entangled particles that not only exist in our brains but also get between lifeforms in the form of emotion and love. I went on to analyze every single relationship I had in my life where I felt love. Especially those romantic relationships that were numerous in my life. What if love is what connects us all not only while we are here, but after we leave this life? What if love was what we took with us. After all when I met so many of my former lovers they still felt love for me, I still felt love for them. I still felt the love for my father who was not living for over a decade. The love between my father and I literally is eternal and space and time do not effect it, even though in his physical form he is no longer here. And what if, what if when each of us leave we take that love with us?

Then we are truly remembered for eternity as that love can not be broken, only changed. That love is timeless. And so I started thinking about what I would do to share my journey here on earth, and I wrote about love. I wrote about love in a way that would describe those relationships no matter how kinky or different and how I felt when I saw my former lovers for the first time sometimes decades later. Of course I wrote those experiences in my memoirs and finally I was at peace with the obsession of being remembered. I did not have to do anything. I did not have to invent anything unique, build a massive fortune, cure cancer, or break records. I just had to continue to love those that meant the most to me and we would be bound by that love through eternity and no matter how much time or space was between us, just like entangled particles we could communicate that love. It brought me to a place of peace from a place of obsession, believing I had to find my one and only soul mate to have been a success in this world. The conclusion I came to was simple to just love everyone and continue to pay it forward by giving people memories, by being kind, by sharing my story which I did when I later (with the help of an advertising executive and friend) published my memoirs and wrote about all of the chapters of love in my life, the women I loved the deepest and would be connected to eternally by that love.

I am not a world renowned poet or writer, I am not the BEST at anything and although I have tried many times to do something great for my society out of sheer gratitude, the only thing I can think of that I have left to my world is love, photographs, and my memoirs of surviving and loving even when life was the most challenging. So I hope you might read my naughty memoir and get something out of it. I am sure your love life will improve as long as you read it chronologically and pay attention to the details, (read between the lines for social commentary as there is a lot in there hidden between the Chapters about Love). You can read the "draft versions for free at ChaptersOfLove.com and listen to the first half or so of the audio book for free as well on that site. Live in Gratitude. Pay it Forward. Cherish your Chapters of Love?.