"Swann was one of those men who, having lived for a long time amid the illusions of love, have seen the blessings they have brought to numberless women increase the happiness of those women without exciting in them any gratitude, any tenderness towards their benefactors; but who believe that in their children they can feel an affection which, being incarnate in their own name, will enable them to survive after their death. When there should no longer be any Charles Swann, there would still be a Mlle Swann, or a Mme X, nee Swann, who would continue to love the vanished father. Indeed, to love him too well perhaps, Swann may have been thinking, for he acknowledged Gilberte's caress with a 'You're a good girl,' in the tone softened by uneasiness in which, when we think of the future, we are prompted by the too passionate affection of a person who is destined to survive us."
Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, p. 610
At least for me, hardly a Proustian scholar, it's always difficult to read Swann's words and not see them as the darker, angrier thoughts that Proust does not put into his own mouth. Granted, Swann has every reason to be suspicious of the motives of his mistress/love/wife Odette, although clearly he played a large role in fashioning his prison. How many parents are guilty of attempting to turn their children into a shrine for their own imagined legacy? We are torn by feelings that our lover doesn't truly appreciate what we have done for them; how our wife or husband doesn't understand how our hard work and sacrifice has made their present life possible. Of course, much of this horror at their lack of appreciation is nothing more than self-absorption and self-pity. Granted, we could all make a more concerted effort to show the ones we love how much we appreciate them and every stupid little thing they do for us. But somewhere alone the way, and this can be especially true when children arrive on the scene, we stop trying to convey that appreciation - just as we stop communicating with our spouse - and instead focus our attention on making sure that our children understand legacy, or at least our version of reality. I will control the future by controlling the narrative of the past.
As I grow older I suspect I will reflect more and more on Proust's observation of an "uneasiness in which, when we think of the future, we are prompted by the too passionate affection of a person who is destined to survive us." I've talked before about the time in life when you begin to think about your Lasts: my last car, my last house, my last dog, my last affair, my last trip to Petra, my last class, etc. It may seem morbid, but the good side is that it leads you to give events more attention attention because you're thinking of them in relation to the great arc of your life and thus trying to appreciate them. Part of this overall realization is the increasing recognition that there people dear to you who are going to survive you by decades. Most naturally this relates to our children, but it also is true of so many of our friends. When I returned from sabbatical my friend Mike was kind enough to say that it really sucked to not have me around at Champlain for a year, and he seemed pretty sad when I told him that he did realize that, because of our age difference, he would have Champlain all to himself for twenty years. It was actually a very sweet moment and one that made me appreciate our friendship all the more, but one which definitely stamped the passing of time. Of course, the passing along of legacy is vanity. Unless you are Elizabeth I or Alexander the Great or Sappho or Rumi - or, for that matter, Proust - your legacy is measured in months and not years, let alone eons. As Marcus Aurelius reminds us, soon you will have forgotten the world and soon the world will have forgotten you. If anything you should probably be focusing on the impact of their legacy on you, because soon, soon, all too soon, you will be the one without them.
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