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In his surprisingly subversive novel, Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury expresses the following sentiment:
“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.
It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.”
Being quite preoccupied with the way I’ve been spending my time, this got me thinking: Does my soul have somewhere to go after I die? What have I touched, and what have I changed to make it more like me?
I am generally considered by most to be an enthusiastic person brimming with ideas for new projects and hobbies and ways to change the things I believe are making my own and other people’s lives unnecessarily difficult. Unfortunately, I am also constrained by a terrible fear of failure, criticism, and a short attention span. While I am prone to start something at the drop of a hat, I rarely finish anything. In Bradbury’s terms, I have not touched anything (despite making many attempts to), and therefore my metaphorical (or literal?) soul has nowhere to go after my demise.
Bradbury’s quote suggests that “leaving something behind” is of greater importance than merely being productive, efficient, and competent while alive. He proposes that “touching something” has cosmic importance that transcends the individual human life, and has significance for humanity as a whole. Simply put, it is not merely about us and our feelings about our own lives, but about what we leave behind for everyone who is, has been, and is yet to come. It is about having a legacy—no matter how small—that shows traces of your own being.
I talk about my inability to finish things quite often, which is why I know that a lot of people struggle with a similar problem. Upon reflection, I believe my struggles stem from two sources: the first is a simultaneous fear of failure and criticism, which leads to procrastination and a tendency toward perfectionism, and the second is a short attention span that leaves me easily distracted and prone to undisciplined behavior that equates into a whole bunch of potentially important but ultimately unfinished projects.
What to do about this? I found the answer to the first problem—the fear of failure and criticism—in Mel Robbins’ The Let Them Theory. Inspired by Mary Oliver’s words, “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Robbins urges us to let people think bad thoughts about us. Sylvia Plath says, “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt,” and for me, most of that self-doubt is born out of the fear of what others will think.
“Adults are allowed to think whatever they want,” claims Robbins, and trying to avoid, or to control, how we and our actions are perceived will only lead to procrastination, fear, perfectionism, and playing small when we deserve to live a big life. It took Robbins many years herself to come to terms with her own theory, but once she did, her life changed in an instant: “Doing what makes you happy, being brave, taking risks, and following your own path will always be more important than other people’s opinions about it.” “Live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds,” Bradbury urges, because time is finite, its duration uncertain, and its meaningful utilization of greater importance than most of us realize.
As for my short attention span and generally undisciplined nature, I have to unfortunately attribute this (in part, at least) to the almost hackneyed critique of popular media. Many studies have indicated that pervasive habits such as doom-scrolling, the overuse of LLMs, an aversion to discomfort, always chasing instant gratification, and the need for constant dopamine hits has left us cognitively vulnerable and even impaired. Furthermore, we are unused to the creative tension that comes from seeing through any task, and we are unable to stick with something because we get bored so easily. As Donatella Versace said, “Creativity comes from a conflict of ideas,” and any conflict—even a creative one—is difficult to bear. We have been taught to avoid pain and seek happiness instead, and the consequence is that we often abandon ship at the first sight of discomfort. Pain is not always a sign that something is detrimental to our health; often, it means we are on the right path. And as for boredom, it is just one example of the pain that comes from pursuing something meaningful. Any completed task requires a perfectly balanced blend of enthusiasm and discipline: the former gets us started, the latter helps us finish.
Discipline is like a muscle that has to be trained over and over again. I used to go through life thinking that I would just wake up one morning and magically have turned into the person I have always wanted to be. It took me years to realize that self-improvement is a gradual process that takes time, patience, and the understanding that I am embarking on a lifelong journey that, in all likelihood, has no final destination. This means always working at it, even if I am struggling. To quote Pablo Picasso, “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”
There are many authors who talk about cultivating healthy habits, learning to be more disciplined, and living a screen-free life to ensure productivity and efficiency (the work of James Clear and David Goggins comes to mind). However, none of these mean anything unless we can accept that leaving behind a legacy of some sort is vital to human life—and death. This is so important, I believe, that it should be the ultimate aim of everything we do in life. Our legacy doesn’t have to be big, but it has to be deliberate.
As Bradbury says:
“The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”
Touching something—being a gardener as opposed to a mere lawn-cutter—is no easy task. It takes courage, detachment from criticism, the ability to see the bigger picture, and a desire to make the most of the one life we have. It asks us to be disciplined, comfortable with discomfort, and to sacrifice pleasure in exchange for meaning. And yet, despite being difficult, it is what life is all about.
When my time finally comes, I want people to say of me (as Bradbury’s character, Granger, says about his grandfather):
“And when [she] died, I suddenly realized I wasn’t crying for [her] at all, but for the things [she] did.
I want them to say:
“I cried because [she] would never do them again …[she] was part of us and when [she] died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them just the way [she] did.”
I want them to say:
“[She] did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night [she] passed on.”
And finally, I want them not just to cry for the things I will never do again, but for the ways I’ve touched the world and left behind a legacy that can mean something to those who remain, and those who will come after me. And more than crying, I want them to find comfort in the knowledge that something in the world is different because I lived in it.
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