Work and how you are remembered

How is it important to be remembered as such and such after passing or while living? It intrigues me when people say such things. Here Perry says he was helpful to people in different instances, as normal human behavior goes the people who benefitted would have taken help and forgotten. Some of them would have been grateful to him as well, and showed it different ways while he was alive. But how did he envision that it would be known to the world about the help that he provided after he was gone? Did that mean he needed people to get inspired to do things that he did for alcoholics and he didn't consider the entertainment that he provided through the series Friends a lesser achievement? Was he associating a greater purpose in one more than the other?

Do we all do things to be known of it or just to be happy having done that at the moment?

A Malayalam saying goes — oru kai kodukunathu maru kai ariyarathu — which roughly translates to “if you do something by one hand even the other hand need not know of it”. Which largely means doing anything which is beneficial to another without anyone knowing it. In a recent instance of my father’s passing a lot of people came in who were associates of him in different instances of 8 decades of his professional and personal lives. Some of them did narrate instances when he was helpful to them even without us knowing of it and there were instances we knew he was, but those people didn’t even bother to pay last homage or be around his partner who needed support. But he was a man who staunchly believed in the above value and we are mighty proud of it. Was this what Perry meant, his loved ones remembering him of his deeds.