Dan Bessudo

One, Or Everyone?

William Breitbart is a psychiatrist who specializes in end-of-life care for the terminally

ill. For most of his patients, the issue is not so much a fear of death or pain, but what makes life

meaningful when their death is imminent (Smith). Searching for the meaning of life is not

particular to the ill; it is possibly the biggest question humanity struggles with. While turning to

religion and philosophy have been common solutions to this question, Breitbart has his patients

think of the part of them that lives on after their death—their legacy. He describes legacy as

anything from their soul, to their children, an organization, or something they created. His

patients then make a “‘legacy project’” to show how they want to be remembered after they die

(Smith).

Wanting to be remembered comes from the fact that as humans we hate to think that

when we die, our ‘self’ just ends; we don’t want to be simply another one of the billions of

people to have lived and died. That is why Breitbart’s patients find their meaning in legacy. In

the face of inevitable death, having a legacy and being remembered is our way of separating

ourselves from the mass of humanity to have a sense of individuality.

In “Late Victorians,” Richard Rodriguez struggles with remaining individual within the

larger gay community of San Francisco during the time of the AIDS epidemic—a time of certain,

and inevitable, death. Upon witnessing the gay pride parade for the first time, Rodriguez

described “private lives…becoming public” and Banners that “blocked single lives thematically

into a processional mass” (Rodriguez 57). People disregarded their individuality and came

together as one to create a more powerful force. Rodriguez analyzes the parade as an outsider,
conveying the fact that he is not or does not feel completely part of San Francisco’s gay

community. Rodriguez then tells us that he and many other gay men live in Victorian houses,

which he calls an “architectural metaphor for family,” but that the house were divided into four

individual apartments for four people (Rodriguez, 58). It’s ironic that so many gay men flocked

to San Francisco to form a strong community, but were at the same time dividing all the “family”

houses into individual homes. Rodriguez further dissects this community by talking about the

several different sects within the gay community of San Francisco. First was the Castro district

where Rodriguez says there was “nothing furtive” about the gay life, and that Gay people there

had “discovered a new confidence,” making homosexuality a “central fact of identity”

(Rodriguez, 60-61). Then there were the people that lived in other parts of San Francisco as well

as the older generation of gay men who derided the “‘Castro Street clones,’” condemning the

“ghettoization of homosexuality” and the “blatancy of homosexuality on Castro Street”

(Rodriguez 60). More than just the division within the gay community, Rodriguez tells us of the

even larger division that existed in San Francisco as a whole, between heterosexual downtown,

and the homosexual neighborhoods. By showing how many divisions and how much tension

there was in San Francisco, especially within the gay community, Rodriguez tries to convey how

difficult and complicated the idea of community actually is.

Unfortunately, what brought everyone in San Francisco together was death, in this case

through the AIDS epidemic. Rodriguez was evidently distraught by the effects of AIDS, by the

fact that in San Francisco death became the “routine…explanation for disappearance”

(Rodriguez 64). He struggles with the normalization of death, but more so with the fact that so

many people he “vaguely remembered” were dying (Rodriguez 65). While talking about the city-

wide effects, Rodriguez inserts several small excerpts from obituaries such as He was a dancer
or He died peacefully at home in his lover Ron’s arms (Rodriguez 65). But strangely, Rodriguez

does not comment on these excerpts, expressing his discomfort with how insignificant the

individual had become. So many people were affected by AIDS, that it seemed as if it didn’t

matter who each person was; they were just another among the thousands to die and be part of

the story that was The Aids Epidemic. As a result, “a community was forming over the city” and

Rodriguez describes watching an AIDS support group in a church as people “middle-aged and

old, straight, gay” gathered in the sanctuary to be blessed (Rodriguez 66). Again, Rodriguez does

not partake in the event; even with the tragic crisis everyone is facing, he is not willing to fully

immerse himself in the community. His closest friend Cesar, while on his deathbed, claimed

Rodriguez would be “spared” because he is “too circumspect,” unwilling to “embrace life” and

his community (Rodriguez 65). By safeguarding his ‘self’ from the collective, Rodriguez denies

himself a very gratifying part of life. And while he accepts that this may be true, Rodriguez

nonetheless blames community for rendering the individual insignificant.

Contrarily, Mark Doty, after seeing a display of fresh fish in the market, uses the idea of Commented [DB1]: Rework transition

community to deal with the insignificance of the individual in his essay “Souls on ice”. Doty,

who lost his partner due to AIDS, also felt that “epidemic was the central fact of the community”

in which he lived (Doty). The fresh mackerel he saw in the market serve as a metaphor for all

the victims of the AIDS epidemic. He says the fish had a certain “splendor,” but “nothing about

them of individuality;” he describes the fish as being like “replications of the ideal” (Doty).

Similar to Rodriguez, Doty finds that any distinct characteristic of the fish does not matter

because the display of fish is looked at as a whole. Because of this he then tells us that for a time

he had been wrestling with “the notion of limit,” and “being someone and no one,” with what it

meant “to be a self, when that self would be lost” (Doty). Now, contrary to Rodriguez, Doty
suggests that maybe it is “not our individual selves” that matter, but our “common identity” as

humans, because humanity “is composed of us, yes, but also goes on without us” (Doty).

Furthermore, continuing to use Doty’s fish as a metaphor, the “collective momentum” of the

population of San Francisco, or even just the gay community is so strong that individual deaths

do not “rob its forward movement” and in a sense the singular “doesn’t really exist” (Doty). So,

in Doty’s eyes, Rodriguez’s refusal to embrace his community and his need to remain distinct

might not be as necessary as it seems. In fact, Doty goes so far as to propose that in the end our

“glory is not our individuality…but our commonness” (Doty). And this is “consoling” for him

because it makes “individual erasures” a little less painful (Doty). Consoling as it may be, Doty

still does “not like this idea;” he would “rather be one fish” (Doty). This is the issue with Doty’s

theory, and one that Rodriguez would undoubtedly have concerns about; it denies that any form

of distinctiveness exists. But we are not like fish; as humans we are inherently aware of our own

existence. Like Breitbart’s patients, we strive for individuality, to have a legacy, to prove our

individual existence. But the question is whether our actions and intentions even matter in trying

to achieve this goal.

Jim W. Corder argues in “Aching For A Self” that what we intend does not matter

because whether or not we exist is not really up to us. Not because we are overshadowed by the

collective as Doty or Rodriguez would say, but because “if we exist,” it is “not in our own

creations, but in other people’s perceptions of our creations” (Corder 139). Corder says that

while he still thinks he is real, his “existence is in doubt,” because anything we “write or show”

is only a “‘trace of the real,’” just “scraps” and “remnants” (Corder 139, 140). However we

attempt to present ourselves to the world, we will not be able to fully incapsulate our true self. So

while “words and pictures are real,” they will never “‘provide access’” to what they try to
represent (Corder 140). In spite of this, Corder claims, humanity created “a two-thousand-year

tradition that encouraged us to believe that our character could be in the text of what we say”

(Corder 140,142). This would allow us to successfully represent our individual self and share it

with others, and in this way, exist. Corder though, argues that “our characters do not emerge in

our discourses,” but only “traces” of our self (Corder 141). Furthermore, he claims that “our texts

don’t exist except as amalgamations of the culture’s texts” (Corder 139). Slightly differing from

Doty’s claim that we simply don’t matter because “there’s too many fish in the sea,” Corder

suggests that perhaps what we consider to be an expression of self is just a fabrication of bits and

pieces from the collective culture (Doty). This all leads him to ask the question: “if you are a

soul in here,” “how do you compose yourself for another” in order to actually exist (Corder

141)? He first gives the answer that “you don’t” become a self because, again, you are “always

left behind by your own text,” but his second answer is that you can try; attempt to represent

yourself (Corder 141). Corder proposes that what really gives us “texture” and “identity” are the

“daily domestic particulars of our lives,” the “minute details;” and if we “fully, painstakingly”

“showed them to one another,” then maybe we will actually “come to know one another”

(Corder 139, 142). Still, Corder says that humans have a tendency to generalize things that are

“individual and particular;” for example, we know “no two blades of grass are alike,” and yet

“the word ‘grass’ suggests an identity which “encourages us to disregard” all the little

differences and details (Corder 142). But Corder argues that “we don’t have to disregard the

differences;” that “if we tell our stories carefully,” then maybe we will “know what particular

grass looks like and smells like and tastes like” (Corder 142). So, bringing it back to people,

although our collective culture and “language may have written us,” when “spoken or written
words” come to us, we must remember that “some soul gathered” those words, and we should

attend to that soul (Corder 143).

I think Corder really does believe in the existence and significance of each individual

soul, but like Rodriguez, he believes it is up to everyone else to not disregard each soul. Whether

it is just another blade of grass, or just another AIDS victim, each person is distinct; maybe he

was a dancer, maybe he was a teacher, or maybe he settled into the interior design department

of Gump’s (Rodriguez 65). Even though in the end everyone has the same fate, each person’s

story is unique and significant.

So yes, it is important to be unique, to have a legacy, because having a sense of

individuality, and not being just another, will give us meaning and purpose as life reaches its

inevitable end. But that’s not to say that community and forming part of a collective is not also

meaningful. There is beauty in our commonness, and it is consoling to think that humanity will

continue on steadily despite individual deaths. So perhaps being individual and forming part of

the collective are not mutually exclusive. We often use the word “everyone” to generalize people

into one entity, and yet this very word acknowledges “every” “one” person’s individuality. We

can still be singular within a group; everyone’s distinct role in a community matters in some

way. In conclusion, as Corder suggests, maybe instead of having the “personal essay,” or the

“collective essay,” we should have an “anthology of solitary shouts, remarks, grunts, and

whispers” (Corder 143).

 Works Cited

Corder, Jim W. “Aching For A Self.” Occasions For Writing-Evidence Idea Essay,

edited by Robert Diyanni, Pat C. Hoy II, Wadsworth, 2008, pp. 139-144.

Doty, Mark. “Souls on Ice.” Poets.org, Academy of American Poets, 3 Oct. 2014,

www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/souls-ice.

Rodriguez, Richard. “Late Victorians.” Harpers Magazine, 1 Oct. 1990, pp. 57–66.

Smith, Emily Esfahani. “How to Find Meaning in the Face of Death.” The Atlantic Atlantic

Media Company, 2 Mar. 2017, www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/03/power-of-

meaning/518196/.