Your Avatar Speaking Words of Wisdom

What if you had a fatal disease and you knew you weren’t going to be around to watch your children grow and provide them with guidance? Maybe you would decide to create an avatar of yourself that would appear at certain times in their lives to give them help and advice (and maybe they would even listen if you weren’t there to argue with). What hard-won wisdom would you share and at what times in their lives would your avatar show up?

These thoughts occurred to me this week at the funeral of my uncle (Francis Coyle Clapp 1917 – 2010). Uncle Frank’s father (my grandfather) died when Frank was only 16 years old, and I found out that before Frank’s father died, he did something like this for Frank and my mother and the other children in the family. At the reception after Frank’s funeral my cousin Mary showed me a memento that her father had framed and hung on the wall of his study.

In the frame was a picture of Frank’s father (Dr. Charles Clapp) and an article clipped from a newspaper in 1926 that contained an interview with his Dad. Uncle Frank grew up before computers and avatars and social media as we know them today, but what he framed and hung on the wall in his study was an equivalent of these things from 80 years ago.

As I read the article I realized I was looking at an example of something that will become more and more common. Our ancestors are going to become more than just historical figures. They will be a presence in our lives like never before. People will start using avatars and social media technology to communicate with us long after they are gone (there's probably a startup or two already working on the idea).

This article was published in the Sunday edition of The Missoulian, the main newspaper in Missoula, Montana (The Sunday Missoulian, May 16, 1926). Our grandfather at that time was president of the University of Montana and the newspaper had asked three prominent citizens of Missoula the same question I asked at the beginning of this post. Here’s how they put it, “If you were to die, leaving an infant son, would you not mourn your inability to advise him later on and give him the benefit of your experience…?”

The article said, “Conceivably it would occur to you that you could leave letters for him to read as he grew up, as he passed his majority, and as he settled into the long, hard pull that comes after the age of 30… What would you like to say to your son at the ages of 15, 21, and 30 years?”

My grandfather could not have known at the time how real this theoretical question was to become, but nine years later he developed stomach cancer and he did die. Yet his words lived on to have a great effect on Uncle Frank in the years that followed. Here’s what my grandfather said to his son:

“AT FIFTEEN: Dear Son – Remember that the conventions of society are the results of countless experiments of human beings with one another, and that you will be wise in following most of them. You will find that they will free you to do those things that are really worth while in your life to do. Dad

“AT TWENTY ONE: Dear Son – As I said in my previous letter, conventions are founded on countless experiments, and before you break them, you should do so not

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