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The day I die, my branch of the family tree will die as well.
I don't have any children who could carry on our genes or pay the fee for our family grave in Austria. Ten years after my death, the cemetery staff will remove our gravestone and give the spot to strangers. It'll be as if we'd never existed.
It's indeed a weird law that people in Austria don't own their graves but have to pay for using it.
My grandmother's brother was out of luck. As nobody was willing to pay the fee for him, his name was replaced with a stranger's.
When I was in Austria this past summer I rode the train from Graz to Vienna. Many young people in my car had one thing in common: Every few minutes they checked their phones.
I watched them as their thumbs quickly scrolled down the TikTok screen and occasionally stopped for one or the other video. I honestly felt bad for them. I felt bad for the ones watching these hideous videos, and I felt bad for the ones feeling a need to post them.
I admit I gasped when my husband Rick showed me the TikTok app on his iPad and made me watch some of these ridiculous videos. In the November 4th issue of The Week I read that TikTok had been visited more often in 2021 than Google, and that the average American spent more time on TikTok each day than on Instagram and Facebook combined.
TikTok's algorithm learns the behavior of users and successfully selects videos that get them hooked. I bet if I'd kept watching, the algorithm would have found the right videos for me too and sucked me in.
Our affluence is a curse. Because life has become so easy for us by simply going to the grocery store to satisfy our basic needs and by escaping death with modern medicine, we have lots of time to worry about the meaning of life, finding that we're just one of eight billion people, a tiny speck among a mass of others on a tiny planet in a vast universe.
No wonder people try to compensate this uncomfortable fact by posting videos on the web or by sharing selfies with one another.
Actor Adam West says in Bats of the Round Table, where he discusses the 1966 Batman TV series with celebrity friends, that actors want to be loved and impress people with whatever they do. Actor Phil Morris elaborates on West's comment, saying that a cheering audience is "one of the greatest drugs around" because it means that "you matter" and that "you resonated."
These observations don't just apply to those who act. The "drug" also explains the selfies and TikTok videos: people want to matter. They want to impress and resonate.
I remember once saying to an acquaintance: "I don't care what people think." His eyes widened in disbelief.
"You don't?" he asked. I shook my head. "No, I don't." Of course, this isn't true. While I don't care what they think about my clothes, hair, hobbies, or diet, there's a part inside of me that does care and wants to feel recognized. It deeply bothers me that the cemetery staff will remove our names only 10 years after my death.
I asked them if I could prepay for at least 20 or 30 years.
"There's the option to prepay," they replied, "but you'll need to discuss this with the cemetery committee." I very well know that it won't make any difference whether or not our gravestone will remain there for 10, 20 or 30 years. I will be dead.
And still, I don't like the thought of our names disappearing from this world.
In the 2022 Irish comedy drama "The Banshees of Inisherin," Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson portray two lifelong friends, P'draic and Colm, and their struggle when Colm ends their friendship out of the blue.
Colm argues that P'draic, though being a nice person, is too dull for him, and that he wants to spend the rest of his life composing music.
He says that dead people won't be remembered for their niceness, but they will be remembered for their music.
He indeed has a point. Most of us aren't big-shot celebrities and will be forgotten, with or without gravestone.
If I'm a nice person, I'll be forgotten a couple of generations later. But if I sing and perform like Michael Jackson, people will still play my songs centuries later.
To Michael Jackson, of course, it doesn't matter anymore that we still play his music and take selfies with his wax figure at Madame Tussauds, and once Colm is dead, it won't matter to him anymore either whether or not we listen to his tunes.
It could be our ego that wants to be fed. It could also be our confused soul looking for meaning. Or it could be the unpleasant knowledge that we come from dust and end as dust while life continues as always. I have to remind my ego that being nice is more precious than being remembered after death. My therapist says that being kind is like throwing a stone in the water: it causes waves that positively affect others. What a beautiful image! I retrieve it every time my ego or my confused soul knocks on my door, craving for recognition.
Dr. Daniela Ribitsch, of Lock Haven, originally comes from Graz, Austria. She teaches German at Lycoming College in Williamsport.