It just burst upon me in the course of my work. I was working on editing an update of wills. Yes, as in bequeathing to one's children or surviving spouse. Never had much respect for it anyway, as I have seen it bring out the worst in humans---the way money always does.
But this is ridiculous I thought, looking at what I was reading. It seemed like an obsessive compulsive disorder, this wanting to ensure from beyond the grave that the money made during lifetimes, went to the "right" person. OCD sanctioned and blessed by "law abiding" civic societies, ensuring the dead person, or the man/woman who will soon be dead, that their hard earned money will only go where they want it to go.
Fair enough, in that we all salt our savings away so we can give something of it to our children or our surviving better halves. A natural sentiment. Beyond this anything else seems just plain laughable. Such is human vanity. The "roof and crown of creation"-- that we think we are-- even death cannot part us from our money.Therefore the detailed , yes, dismally detailed wills.
To what purpose? Let the Great Wave be our teacher. No, not the one that Hokusai painted. I am talking about the Sendai tsunami that swept and ravaged Japan on Friday the 11th of March 2011. "In one fell swoo
p'' everyone was just swept away, and for those who remain --of what use is their little stash in such a situation? In minutes a very advanced society was left torn and ravaged. Lost families and loved ones, houses swept away, the threat of nuclear radiation, when existence is threatened of what use is money? It does well to remember that Japan is a nation that has risen proudly --samurai like-- from the ashes of Nagasaki and Hiroshima -- a horror that was deliberately manufactured, never mind the justification of it. But this was Nature in all her raging fury and is impossible to predict or be prepared for.
Decades ago when I was doing my Bachelors in Eng. Lit. We did a Shelley poem called Ozymandias.The pertinent lines run thus
"...And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: 10
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".
Percy Bysshe Shelley :Ozymandias
Funny, I too wrote about wills in my latest post.
ReplyDeleteOh those days of poetry and literature with no other worry--reading Shelly poem brought me back to school and Sr. Jane our principal and Ms.Jane Miranda, our English teacher--thanks !
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