Die, we will do the rest!

I don’t know if you realize it but many people wish you dead.
They wish you dead because you are worth more dead than alive.

Edgar Allan PoeWhen you die, especially if you were a struggling artist, your unsold paintings or writings will suddenly become valuable and in grand demand.
Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allan Poe, Franz Kafka, Vincent Van Gogh to name a few, struggled all their lives and never made any money during their lifetime.
They achieved fame (and made money for a few) only after their demise.

On January 29, 1845, Edgar Poe’s poem “The Raven” appeared in the Evening Mirror; it became a popular sensation but Poe was only paid the paltry sum of $9 for its publication.

When they died, artists’ fame skillfully orchestrated by a few literary agents spread like wildfire and brought great riches to those (think insider trading) in the know.

Same goes for politicians.
Even if you policies were decried while you were alive, you become a shining beacon of virtue after you die.

Margaret Thatcher (union buster), Ronald Reagan (here he goes again) and Francois Mitterrand (wily French Socialist) despised by many while in office, became a few years after their death, revered icons of their party.

When Jesus died, very few people knew or cared about him. He was just one the thousands crucified by the Romans for seditious speeches.
It is only a hundred years after his death that the Catholic Church appropriated him and made him what he is today: the first successful hippy.

Alive, Jesus was of no value to the Jews, the Romans or the young and struggling Roman Catholic Church.
His fame, propagated by a few zealots, grew much after his death when nobody could really recall what kind of man he was or what he really accomplished.
And when you are dead, even if you were very humble, you cannot object to anything said about you. If Jesus was the kind of man we are told he was, I don’t think that he would have liked to become deified.

Personally, I cannot wait to go ad patres to become famous.
My humble stories that few people read will undoubtedly become universally praised masterpieces.

If I were you, I would carefully preserve all my writings and put them aside to assure the wealth and wellbeing of your grandchildren.

As agents are fond of saying, “die, we will do the rest!”

Alain