Marcus Aurelius wrote:
"You will be forgotten either way. So live in such a manner that, while you remain, you belong to yourself."
Most people read the first sentence and immediately become uncomfortable. You will be forgotten. But why? It's hardly a controversial observation.
Give it a few generations and almost all traces of us disappear.
The paintings. The careers. Achievements. Social media posts. The houses. The opinions. Gone.
Most people cannot name their great-great-grandparents.
Yet those people were once convinced their lives were important too.
The mistake is assuming this is bad news. I think it's liberating.
Because if you're going to be forgotten anyway, then why spend your life seeking approval from people who are equally temporary?
Why build a life around impressing strangers? Why pursue goals you never chose? Why spend decades becoming something you don't even want to be?
A few months ago I found myself looking at job advertisements. Nothing wrong with that. People need jobs. Bills need paying. But some of the roles left me staring at the screen wondering what exactly the end game was.
Become a better administrator? A better coordinator? Manager?
Become exceptionally competent at moving products from one place to another?
Then what? Retire. Get a watch. Die.
Be forgotten. Really? That was the grand plan?
What struck me wasn't that the jobs were unimportant. Somebody has to do them.
What struck me was how easy it would be to slowly hand ownership of your life to something you never consciously chose.
One year becomes five. Five becomes ten. Then one day you wake up and realise you've become an expert in a subject that never genuinely interested you.
Not because you wanted to. Because it happened by default.
That's the part of the quote that interests me. Not being forgotten.
Belonging to yourself.
Most people assume freedom means doing whatever you want. I don't think it does.
Freedom is remaining connected to the things that matter to you while the world continuously tries to recruit you into other people's priorities.
It's surprisingly difficult. Everybody has a plan for your life.
Employers. Family. Friends. The internet.
Everybody is offering instructions. Very few are offering freedom.
Belonging to yourself means refusing to become an extra in somebody else's story. It means accepting that your interests might make no sense to anyone else.
It means making the painting. Writing the book. Starting over.
Changing direction. Looking ridiculous. Failing publicly.
It means choosing the thing that feels alive over the thing that merely looks sensible.
Marcus Aurelius was right. You will be forgotten either way.
The question isn't whether the world remembers you.
The question is whether, while you were here, you managed to remain recognisably yourself.