I don't very often think about death. Death is merely a transition. One passes through the veil.
But I had occasion to think about it, some, recently.
In setting up the current Wix blog, in order to use a custom domain name, I had to sign up for a premium hosting plan that's going to cost me $200/year. I don't like that. I mean to keep the former WordPress blog intact, and pay for it, at least through 2025 (one more year), in order to give myself time to transfer everything I want, from the old blog to the new.
But, after that, what?
I can't afford, and my estate probably won't can afford, either, to keep paying those fees in perpetuity. At some point, the fees unpaid, the domain name will come down and the hosting, and the site, vanish.
Some people have been edified by my words. Doing the latest episode of the podcast, I learned to my surprise that it has a following. The last prior episode had been played 33 times. and seven people had visited the podcast within the previous week.
A few weeks ago, a high school classmate, Friend on FaceBook, posted one of those memes about "Choose where you spend eternity," viz., Heaven or Hell. It included the statement, "Hell has no exit." But I have a blog post entitled the exact opposite, "Hell has an exit." So I posted a comment, linking to that. Having not read the post myself in many months, I decided to review it now.
I wound up saying, "Did I write that? Did those words come from me?" Here was some pretty advanced thinking. Apparently, sometimes material comes out of me that I myself would never expect.
None of which is going to confer any sort of immortality.
It might be different if I could find an actual publisher, and publish some actual books. Physical artifacts that one can hold in one's hand, and that are capable of existing for centuries.
For about two months including March 2020, now four years ago, because of COVID, I was housed in a certain dorm, that happened to have a bookcase. The thickest volume in there caught my eye. It was at least two inches thick. 800 pages. Volume 5 of The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, whom I'm sure you've most likely never heard of.
Chesterton was a prolific devotional writer, in England, in the first decades of the 20th century. His works were profound, moving, and insightful. He also did a series of mystery novels, featuring the priest/sleuth Father Brown. In his memoir, Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis said that at the boarding school he attended for a year, where the physically stronger boys constantly bullied the less-strong ones, the more bookish among them would talk with one another about "GBS [George Bernard Shaw] and GKC [Chesterton]." Such was his stature at one time.
No one reads him today.
My words will die with me.
In the meantime, I can do what I can do.
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