This fact that the written word lasts is one of the reasons that I write.
Written words have a longevity that is rare, I believe. They stick around in a way that a corporate career, a gardening hobby, and a love for basketball never could.
Off the top of my head, a body of music is probably the closest there comes to something kindred.
Anyway: I want a written legacy, you see.
Some kid of account of my time and thoughts, if even that record is, on a long enough time line, even a temporary one.
Maybe I can leave something that my kids and grandkids can point to one day and marvel at.
The short of it is that I love to read. I love to write.
And I love my girls to the ends of the earth.
Truth be told, this is one of my favorite passages ever:
Words have a longevity I do not. I had thought I could leave her a series of letters—but what would they say? I don’t know what this girl will be like when she is fifteen; I don’t even know if she’ll take to the nickname we’ve given her. There is perhaps only one thing to say to this infant, who is all future, overlapping briefly with me, whose life, barring the improbable, is all but past. That message is simple: When you come to one of the many moments in life where you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.
-Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air (Amazon)
