Life After Death

I was listening to a song today, some rapper who said, “You die twice; once when you’re not alive and once when you’re forgotten”. I don’t agree with that especially so because in Islam there is life after death, but the phrase got me to think what would happen when I die, in the sense the world I leave behind and the legacy that continues. I was talking to my manager who said we, as in we engineers, don’t want to be the one who created the CFC and burned a hole in the ozone. What he’s saying is we need to think also the impact that we have after we die, and I empathically agree.

While setting my phone the other day, iOS asked whether I wanted to set something legacy feature where all my data would be available to the person I nominate. I naturally decided to put my wife as the person that will be given the authority to access my data, but the warning made me change my mind. It said my wife would be able to access ALL the information, history etc. I don’t think I would like to have all my data dumped onto her. It took me a whole lifetime to go through it anyway, it doesn’t seem right to make another person to go through it again.

How about people who died and their works were posthumous published? I think that’s different since those are works; intentional piece created by a person. Nowadays our data can be composed of anything and can be just any unintentional scrap of our existence. That being said, it reinforces my belief that we should create things intentionally and with the intention to benefit others.

Thank you for reading.