Legacy

In the US, you can’t be President for more than two terms. And so, towards the end of the second term, every US President starts focusing on his “legacy”, or what posterity will remember him for (if at all). Thus, they try and do something grand, and something visible globally.

Obama, of course, won the Nobel Peace Prize right after becoming President simply because for not being George W. Bush. Obama knew how ridiculous that prize was and so rightly doesn’t that count that as his legacy. Instead, his attempt at leaving a legacy seems to be to change the US’s equation with its long term enemies. First Cuba, and now Iran. And in Iran’s case, if he has indeed succeeded in setting a system in place to prevent them from going nuclear, that would be a huge bonus (at least from an American perspective).

Such attempts at creating a legacy makes sense for a US President. After all, it’s not like he will do much else after his second term, right? Except if he is Jimmy Carter. Carter went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize decades after leaving the White House. But that’s very difficult and hence very rare.

For the rest of us mere mortals, Alex Balk says “Don’t even bother”. The longer version I’ll quote it in its entirety because of how caustic yet well written it is:
“When you look back at your past you see mostly the sorry parts and bad decisions. After a certain age these mount to an almost intolerable level not just because there are so many more of them but because you realize that with the finite amount of time you have left and your inability to do anything right they will become the bulk of your legacy in life, to the extent that you will have any legacy in life. (Knowing that there is actually no such thing as a legacy in life and that all eventually comes to dust should, in theory, make the terrible things you’ve done and the awful amount of time you’ve wasted somehow feel less soul-crushing, but theory only counts in particle physics and social justice warrioring.) If you started to draw up a list of your disappointments you might never be fully finished, and the idea of even ranking them seems overwhelming when you consider just how horrible all the things that have happened to and because of you really are, but that doesn’t mean that someone else can’t give it a go. How many of these disappointments are on your own personal list? Tell us on social media or whatever!”
I loved the ending: where else but Facebook or Twitter can all that drivel end up?!

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