Remember My Name
I want you to remember my name.
Ever since the days of Achilles, a certain significant proportion of the population has been obsessed with leaving a legacy on earth where future humans would remember their name. It's an obsession that yearns for some form of life after death. We want something of ourselves to live on. It's the motivation behind branding and naming your law firm after yourself. It feeds Trump and Musk and Jobs and Bolt. In a world of 7 billion people - to be remembered you have to be really special. You have to be at the top of your game - the best in the world at what you do.
In order to become the best, it requires absolute complete focus on one specific task, one specific thing - to the detriment of absolutely everything else. It is the mark of human civilisation that we all specialise into something unique that we can master and then we co-operate for the betterment of the whole society. This is how we accomplish so much - by focusing on the small dent we can make in the universe. Super-achievers take this to the extreme and sacrifice everything else so that their dent is as big as possible and then they can engrave their name onto it.
We see the obsession in the naming of products or the credit given for intellectual ideas, books, papers, etc. By stamping an object with our identity we can receive the glory when it makes a difference. So the desire to have your name remembered is mirrored in our need to be important. To be meaningful. To make a difference.
The movie Whiplash looks at this phenomenon where a young drummer Andrew Neiman is deadset on becoming the best drummer in the world. He understands the sacrifice he is making and does all he can to clear out everything else in his life to make room for the hours and hours of practice that he needs in order to make himself into the world's best drummer. In doing so he willingly goes through physical and mental anguish of the worst degree - to prove that he wants it bad enough. That he deserves the accolades. Even when a car crashes into him and he finds himself lucky to be alive, he rushes out blood and all to the concert so that he doesn't let down his maniacal conductor. It's gone too far. All he cares about is having his name up in lights. He forgets the love of drumming that got him here in the first place.
It’s a road to misery.
I want to make a plea for you to stand back and let the work speak for itself. Let your passion speak for yourself. The goal of people remembering your name is not serving you. Rather try and make the best thing in the world or become the best in the world because that is what you have to offer. Do it without thinking about a legacy you leave, or how best to brand it so that everyone knows it came from you. If you can willingly give away the credit for your best work - in service of the real goal which you are after, you win. It shows that you are humble enough to know that we are but so lucky to be in the position that we are in - hurtling through infinite space on the edge of a rock.
Who cares if people remember your name? You'll be dead.
Focus on making the best stuff you can - to help as many people as you can. Your name and your ego can wait.