By Dr. Janardan Subedi
Since I started writing many op-eds lately, people have begun asking curious questions. Some wonder why I am doing this at all. “What does he hope to get out of it?” they ask. A few whisper if I have some hidden agenda — as if writing critically about society and politics must serve some secret ambition. One respected gentleman, perhaps trying to make sense of my intentions, must have thought that I write because I want to be remembered after I am gone. And so, he asked me the question that started this reflection:
“How do you want people to remember you after your death?”
I laughed. Not a polite, restrained laugh, but one of those involuntary bursts that escapes when a question hits both the ego and the absurdity of life. It wasn’t mockery but recognition — recognition of how deeply we humans cling to illusions of permanence. After a pause, I answered:
“I don’t want people to remember me at all once I am gone.”
This answer may sound strange or even unsettling. But I mean it with complete sincerity. I do not write to build statues of words that might survive my bones. I write because I have something to say now. I don’t care if my name vanishes like dust after I’m gone. The obsession with remembrance — the cult of legacy — is not noble; it is vanity disguised as virtue.
Western culture, more than any other, feeds this obsession. Achilles went to Troy not for justice, but for kleos — eternal glory. Shakespeare wrote with the audacity of a man who believed his verses could outlast time itself: “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” Centuries later, Ernest Becker argued in The Denial of Death that all culture — our monuments, our history books, even our social media accounts — exists to cheat death by leaving something behind. But let’s be honest: how many of us remember the names of the masons who built the Pyramids? Or the hundreds of unnamed artisans who carved the marble latticework of the Taj Mahal? Memory is fickle, selective, and rarely fair.
Even Marcus Aurelius, the great philosopher-king of Rome, dismissed the vanity of remembrance. “Soon,” he wrote in Meditations, “you will have forgotten all things; soon all things will have forgotten you.” This was not despair — it was freedom from the burden of trying to be immortal in memory.
Hindu philosophy takes this even further. The Bhagavad Gita teaches us to act without attachment to results: “Karmanye vadhikaraste ma phaleshu kadachana.” We are to do our work, fulfill our duties, but not obsess over what we get in return — whether that is wealth, praise, or memory. A karma yogi plants a tree not because he wants his name engraved on a plaque but because he knows someone, someday, will sit in its shade. The Upanishads remind us that the ego — the “I” that so desperately wants to be remembered — is an illusion, maya. “Tat tvam asi,” they say — you are not this name, this body, this fragile self. You are part of something much larger and infinite, and that infinite whole doesn’t care for fame or statues.
Buddhism agrees. There is no permanent self (anatta) to remember in the first place. We are a flow of conditions and causes, a flame that burns for a moment and then moves on. Buddha himself was not interested in whether people would worship him after his death. His teachings — the dharma — mattered because they pointed to truth, not because they preserved his name. Zen master Dogen put it best: “To study the self is to forget the self.” To forget the self is true liberation.
Science, ironically, backs up this ancient wisdom. Neuroscientists tell us that memory is not a fixed recording of reality but a reconstruction — a story we rewrite each time we recall it. People won’t remember me accurately anyway. They’ll take a sentence I wrote, strip it of its context, and post it on Instagram over a photo of a sunset. Worse, they might turn me into something I never was: a “guru,” a “visionary,” or — heaven forbid — a “national hero.” If that’s what remembrance means, I want none of it.
There is also the cosmic perspective. In five billion years, the sun will burn out. Long before that, everything we know — every name, every monument, every trace of “Dr. So-and-So” — will be cosmic dust. If the universe doesn’t care about my name, why should I?
Swami Vivekananda, one of India’s greatest spiritual thinkers, understood this well. He said, “It is far better to leave behind a few noble thoughts than a thousand marble monuments.” Vivekananda’s words in Chicago still inspire people today not because he sought fame but because he sought truth. His focus was on the work itself, not on how long people would chant his name.
But modern society, obsessed with digital permanence, has turned memory into a commodity. We “memorialize” Facebook profiles of the dead, turning them into virtual tombstones. We write sentimental tributes, not for the deceased, but for the public performance of grief. If this is what memory looks like, I’d rather fade into silence.
There’s also a tragic comedy in how societies deal with the dead. We build statues for leaders we ignored when they were alive. We give awards to artists posthumously while their living counterparts struggle to pay rent. We write glowing obituaries about “visionaries” we never once took seriously. Memory, in this sense, is not honor — it’s collective guilt dressed up as praise.
If I need a metaphor for my life, let it be a candle. A candle burns bright, gives light and warmth, and then melts away without regret. Its purpose is fulfilled in the act of burning itself. It does not demand to be remembered after it is gone. I want my life to be like that — not a monument, but a light, brief yet useful.
The more I think about it, the clearer it becomes that freedom lies in being unburdened by the question of legacy. The Isha Upanishad tells us: “Do not covet wealth or fame; live your allotted span with detachment.” To live with detachment is not to live without meaning — it is to live fully in the present, to act with sincerity, without the burden of future applause.
Hinduism calls this liberation moksha. Buddhism calls it nirvana. Western existentialists like Sartre call it authenticity — the courage to accept that life has no inherent meaning except the meaning we give it now. Alan Watts, who bridged East and West, once said: “Trying to perpetuate your name is like trying to make ripples in water stand still.”
So when I laughed at that question — “How do you want to be remembered?” — I laughed because we are asking the wrong question. The real question is: How do you want to live now?
I want to live honestly, write truthfully, and love without conditions. I want to do my work without asking for statues or garlands when I am gone. If someone remembers me, fine. If not, even better. When I die, I don’t want social media tributes, flowery obituaries, or awkward speeches about how “inspiring” I was. Fix a pothole. Plant a tree. Teach a child something useful. That will be enough.
When the candle has burned out, the light lingers for just a moment — and that moment is all that matters.
(Dr. Janardan Subedi is Professor of Sociology at Miami University, Ohio. He writes on political ethics, democratic transitions, and institutional accountability in South Asia.)