What's it all about?

As I continue to read REWORK, I come across really good statements, that once again, taken out of the context of the book have a lot more meaning to me than possibly intended by the authors. 

You want to feel that if you stopped doing what you do, people would notice

 

In the context of the book this refers to the work we do. The book asks if you really love your job and if not, why aren't you doing something else? That's a whole topic on it's own and a question I am currently asking myself. But it's not the focus of my blog today. 

I've written before about the time-line and the mind-fuck that it is to me.  Try follow my line of thought......

 

I am essentially the end of a genetic line. My mother is the only daughter of her parents. Her father had a brother and a sister. His brother had one daughter. His sister never had any children. There ends his family name when my mother and her first cousin married and took on their husband's names. 

 

My father had one sister. She married and her children took on their father's family name. My father had a son and a daughter.  My sister passed away but even if she hadn't and had had children, they would have taken their father's family name. 

I am the end of the line, and the chances of me fathering a child are remote. My family name ends when I die. 

Now this is not to say that there aren't other people in the world with the same family name as mine, or as my grandfather's. But we aren't related; we just have the same name. 

Or are we?

The only way that I got here with the family name that I have was because someone with the same family name as mine had a kid, and they had a kid, and these kids were all boys who carried the name forward. I wonder if someone, 150 years ago sat in their cave and asked themselves what would happen if they didn't have a son, if their family name would disappear. Is it an internal and natural instinct that causes us to procreate? 

I think the real question is: "Does it matter after I'm gone?"

What matters the most to me, is that when I am, somebody notices.