There’s a moment in a video by Michael Stevens from Vsauce that stopped me cold. He introduces the solar corona of the self—that shimmering halo of memories, photos, junk, and genetics we leave behind. Hearing it, I felt an ache for every person I’ve lost. If I say their names aloud, even once, their light flares again. For a heartbeat, they’re here.

Then he unveils the death-clock gadget—a retro memento mori that dares you to press a red button and watch your seconds drain away. Part of me recoils (I’m trying to cook dinner, not spiral into existential dread) and part of me loves the honesty. There’s something jarring about being pulled from the rhythm of everyday life—laundry, grocery lists, dinner prep—and suddenly being reminded that this is all temporary. That contrast is exactly what makes it powerful. We live in such a blur of routine that we rarely pause to consider how finite our time really is. This little clock doesn’t just count down your life—it asks if you’re really living it.

From there, Michael walks through the ghosts of self:

• Nominal ghost – your name, detached and drifting, showing up in records, tags, and headlines—whether or not the story behind it is true. Michael Stevens pointed out that even small inaccuracies can extend the life of a name. That idea struck me. Our names can outlive us, but they often wander further than our real selves ever did. They become something else: a headline, a data point, a word someone utters with no sense of the full person behind it. There’s something both powerful and unsettling about that—being known only by what remains on paper or screen, not in memory.

• Likeness ghost – the images that survive us. Charming… until you remember that one photo (you know the one) orbiting forever in bad lighting. Not all ghosts are flattering, yet they’re authentically us—awkward angles and all. There are images of me I hope never resurface, but part of me knows they might. Those pictures might not tell the full story, but they still mark that I was here.

• Genetic ghost – the humbling math that shows most of our DNA vanishes after a handful of generations. We’re baby teeth, not cornerstones. Legacy turns out to be laughter lines, adopted recipes, the curl of a grandchild’s smile more than any nucleotide string. I used to think our genes were the most permanent part of us, but even that fades, leaving behind only traits, gestures, echoes.

• Fossil ghost – thanks, but no. I have zero interest in a one-in-a-billion chance to become sedimentary art. Tree ghost sounds better: companies like Earth Funeral can transform our remains into seedlings. Fossils preserve a pose; a tree whispers a purpose—shade, oxygen, fruit, renewal. I don’t want to be dug up—I want to bloom.

• Ripple ghost – every action, no matter how small, radiates outward. Just by existing, we tug imperceptibly on Saturn’s rings. That cosmic nudge reminds me that kindness, creativity, and the “little” choices on CherryCoBiz matter more than page views. A shared recipe. A thoughtful post. A kind word dropped into someone’s hard day. These things seem small, but they shift energy. They plant seeds. Maybe someone will sit under a tree I helped grow—physically or metaphorically—and never know my name. And maybe that’s okay. Ripples don’t need credit—they just need movement.

But the video doesn’t stop there; it shifts to the age of documentality—a world where almost everything is pre-remembered. More people own cell phones than toothbrushes. We text, swipe, and selfie ourselves into a giant haunted house of permanent files. Michael calls it living as ghosts: an account, a like, a scroll. It feels empowering (our stories archived!) and anxiety-inducing (nothing ever really slips away). Neil Postman’s information-action ratio echoes loudly here: How much of what we consume online actually changes what we do? How often do we doom-scroll for an hour and recall none of it? Our brains crave unsettledness, so the feed obliges—endless novelty, minimal resolution.

Yet even in this sea of documentation, vast pockets of unknowns remain: thousands of unidentified bodies, missing planes discovered only by accident, census margins wide enough to hide entire cities. Complete record-keeping is still a fantasy. We are, as Michael puts it, “animals walking in and out of rooms” leaving papier-mâché footprints.

So what’s my takeaway? That the self is less a single solid statue and more a grove: roots (memories), trunks (names), branches (images), leaves (moments), seeds (ripples). Life is short in this form, but the forest keeps sprouting. I might even press a gold record one day—not for aliens or immortality, but for the joy of etching one more ring in the trunk.

If you could choose one ghost to nurture—a name, an image, a tree, a ripple—which would you pick, and why? Drop your thoughts below. Let’s grow a little forest together.