The Legacy

No one's life is any more important than any other's in God's eyes but those who think they have led influential lives find leaving behind a legacy to be a necessity.

Alfred Nobel established the Nobel Peace Prize.  Many have received this prize, but is there peace in the world?

Less noble people suffer no lesser degree of megalomania than Mr. Nobel.  For example, libraries had been built to commemorate the accomplishments politicians.  I have never made a trip to any of such libraries, nor do I ever expect to have time for it.  I would rather go pray in churches around the world.

Not ever planning to visit a politician's library does not mean I cannot fantasize what some of them might be like.  My imaginary ones may have a touch of irony.  A sensitive reader may find them to be objectionable, so this is the time when the browser window needs to be closed.

Fantasy library no. 1:  The Library Of Forgetfulness.  The visitor walks in, absorbs all the information the library has to offer and walks out remembering nothing, not even who he is or what he had done his entire life, not even creating the world's first trillion-dollar deficit.

Fantasy library no. 2:  The Library Of Deceit And Destruction.  The visitor walks in and supposedly hears the voice of God in surround sound telling him to invade a country and depose a supposedly wicked dictator for allegedly having weapons of mass destruction.  As he walks toward the grand foyer, he sees a wax figure looking presidential with a red button controlling the world's second largest nuclear arsenal in front of a wall of mirrors with a banner across the top that reads: Weapon of Destruction, and on the floor, he sees a letter supposedly from a pope telling the wax figure not to invade the dictator's country.  Upon exiting the library, the visitor finds himself stepping on dead bodies and weaving through countless refugees.  At one point, he lifts his head and sees a larger-than-life hologram of the suffering Christ on the cross with blood dripping from His five Holy Wounds.

Fantasy library no. 3:  The Anti-Library.  This is not a library for the Anti-Christ but it is similar in one respect: it looks empty.  Instead of providing information to the visitor, it gathers information on the visitor, stores it in memory, performs a detailed ancestry and record search, then puts everything through a super computer so that by the time the visitor leaves the premises, the Anti-Library knows more about him than he knows about himself.  The violated and mystified visitor sees at a distance a hologram of two familiar figures, one above the other.  On top is an image of Edward Snowden, and under him an image of the megalomaniac for whom the library was built.

Fantasy library no. 4:  The English Lesson Library.  The visitor who visits this library will be given a lesson in word usage.  The only lesson the library teaches is what "is" is.  He is blown away by the infinite number of ways to parse "is" and walks away stained by shame.

Fantasy library no. 5:  The Feminist Library.  The visitor learns that the only way for a woman to be powerful is to act and dominate like a man, the consequence of whose actions ultimately subjugates women to men. [1]


[1] One ought to recall that it is both Mary's obedience to God and Christ obeying His Mother that lifted the Blessed Virgin Mary to be Queen of Heaven and Mother of all.