Heroes Not Zombies

There’s an Etruscan word, saeculum, that describes the span of time lived by the oldest person present, sometimes calculated to be about a hundred years. In a looser sense, the word means the expanse of time during which something is in living memory. Every event has its saeculum, and then its sunset when the last person who fought in the Spanish Civil War or the last person who saw the last passenger pigeon is gone.

Orwell’s Roses. Rebecca Solnit

From time to time I muse about what it is to be a person, and whether or not that uniqueness of an individual is bound to the presence of their physical body. It seems clear to me that it’s not. Great artists continue to have an impact on others and on the world through their art, long after they are gone. Great musicians and composers too. Great writers, thinkers, inventors, also. But even within a family, a loved one has never completely gone…..maybe not ever, but at least not until there are no more stories told about them, no more memories lodged in the minds of the living, no more of their creative works still in existence, whether that be a poem, a song, a garden, or a something made by their own hands.

I’m sure that what it is to be a person, a unique, individual, is not bound to the presence of a physical body, nor is it limited to the short span of life that any of us are likely to experience.