Inheritance Inheritance

Ever since my little baby girl was born, the question of what to leave her with has been haunting me, you know, when I am gone.

It might not be unusual for any dads to want all the good things to be happening to their children, even though that is mathematically impossible. I have been thinking, if there is one thing I want to leave my daughter with, what is it?

Surely you would hope your offspring carry all the good genes you have been proud and bragging about; surely you would also hope all the good stuff has not landed onto you would land on her; surely you would hope she is going to enjoy her life like anyone has or hasn't been able to; you might also go as far as wishing that those hardships, which made who you are, are not going to make her struggle as much as you have done…the wish list is endless.

STOP.

None of these are within your control, no matter how much insurance you have put aside to reinforce the unpredictable, no matter what wise choices you want to make on her behalf. This is beyond you, and that, is a fact.

So the question is, what is the thing YOU want to leave her with?

What would be the one thing when she grows up, and I am gone, she would appreciate, more than anything else? That seems to lead to a plausible answer, memory, or in logical terms, evidence of all what has happened. Admittedly, this is the reason for my "one DVD for every birthday". Memory is what completes the missing of existence, what offers a sense of belonging.

To put this into perspective, what can we leave to the next generation who will be standing on the same planet as we do?

As intelligent specie as ourselves, we are often driven by the very question of who we are, what our purposes are, if any. Although sometime I do find it fascinating that when we try to understand so much about the world while we know so little about ourselves, little about where we came from. Just you know, the acceptable answer for me to question like "what will you do when it is coming to the end of this physical world" would be, preserving human knowledge.

Another one of my wildest imagination is that if there is a gigantic recording device, casting upon on planet earth, to record anything and everything that has been going on this very place from the point of time of which we can comprehend till now, to go on to the rest of our existence. Can you imagine what it is like if we get hold of that tape, sit down and watch? Apart from the overwhelming length of time, I think we will be bored with all the blank and repetitive daily activities the human race has been carrying over centuries, even with fast forward key pressed. There is just not that much of excitement. Moments such as great inventions, major history changing events, or even wars, will seem to be such rare seasonings on a massive plate of fried potatoes – there is just not much thrilling stuff going on.

But then, if you try to keep yourself awake during this long movie, and watch really close, I think you would probably find, there are some interesting aspects of history, although seemingly random and ad hoc, were driven to certain directions by those rare sparkling moments, by which I believe, mutation is the decisive factor of nature evolution. The impact of such moments depends on the context, but the common trait is, these are never created by one individual; they are collective efforts. Every hero has his time and place, where his influence converged with a stream of efforts resulting at critical mass. Only by then, the normal daily life is subtly being swayed from one route to another, undetectable for most of us.

Now, back to what I was nagging about inheritance. Officially I don't want 20 years down the line, there is my daughter, sit and get bored by the long-winded DVDs with no excitement whatsoever. Apart from telling her what has happened before she could remember, it won't tell her anything about who her dad is. For her and my own sake, it seems that the choice is fairly simple - contributing to the critical mass aggregation activities. At the very least, I would have something for her to feel thrilled about.