We are all dying. It's no profound comment to say that life is merely the process of death. And that's why, despite the depression that has made me consider suicide more often than is normal, I still find so much worth living for. Because of the Great Inevitable, it gives all the more purpose to what time we have here. Famed atheist and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson once said that, given the chance to live forever, he wouldn't take it. "Death," he said (as I paraphrase), "is what gives me the motivation to learn, to grow. To get up in the morning."
But because we are all dying, it can sometimes be hard to know how we can live. One of my coworkers, well into his seventies, will be retiring soon and moving south, where the cold is less biting and the snowdrifts all but impossible. He invited me to his home today--the first time I've been there--to pick up some of his books. He's now at the point in his life where holding onto every tome he's purchased is no longer wise. He'd rather that they go to someone who would appreciate them and the wisdom and words inside the variegated covers than that they end up in a second-hand store or sold in an online auction by his children after he passes.
I don't always agree with my coworker's analyses. We don't see eye-to-eye politically, pedagogically, nor historically. And that's okay. He knows and has read and lived much more than I. I haven't even reached the age he was when I was born--I have a lot more dying to do before I get to his position. And who knows? Maybe I'll come 'round to his point of view when I become a septuagenarian, too. But the point isn't where we disagree--or even where we agree--that matters: It's the fact that we're both in this world, dying together, and we can learn from one another.
A thin plastic tube of oxygen connected him to life. He's not sickly, necessarily; he's old. His body needs the assistance the oxygen gives him. I couldn't help but think of my baby--now almost 10 years ago--when he, too, was connected to life by a tether of plastic, air pumping into his too-small nose. He had so much dying to do before he left, and so much living in between those breaths of canned air.
My son is dying. I am dying.
So why would I worry about a handful of books (beautiful "Folio" editions of the four great Shakespearean tragedies: King Lear, Othello, Macbeth, and, of course, Hamlet, as well as scholarship of Samuel Johnson and Harold Bloom) when we're all drifting toward the exit?
I'm reminded of the lyrics of a song I listened to in the '90s...and still now, twenty years later, if I'm being honest. It comes from the band Live, a song called "Dance With You". The song is moving, particularly one part of the chorus. "I see a world where people/Live and die with grace."
Despite being of a different generation--of viewing the world through younger eyes--I could see a man dying with grace. He was bequeathing something important to him to someone who would also see the importance of the bequest. I am dying just as certainly as he, but my timeline is (God willing) a little bit longer. Graciously, he passed a piece of himself on.
Would that I could always see the world where people so live...
...and die.
But because we are all dying, it can sometimes be hard to know how we can live. One of my coworkers, well into his seventies, will be retiring soon and moving south, where the cold is less biting and the snowdrifts all but impossible. He invited me to his home today--the first time I've been there--to pick up some of his books. He's now at the point in his life where holding onto every tome he's purchased is no longer wise. He'd rather that they go to someone who would appreciate them and the wisdom and words inside the variegated covers than that they end up in a second-hand store or sold in an online auction by his children after he passes.
I don't always agree with my coworker's analyses. We don't see eye-to-eye politically, pedagogically, nor historically. And that's okay. He knows and has read and lived much more than I. I haven't even reached the age he was when I was born--I have a lot more dying to do before I get to his position. And who knows? Maybe I'll come 'round to his point of view when I become a septuagenarian, too. But the point isn't where we disagree--or even where we agree--that matters: It's the fact that we're both in this world, dying together, and we can learn from one another.
A thin plastic tube of oxygen connected him to life. He's not sickly, necessarily; he's old. His body needs the assistance the oxygen gives him. I couldn't help but think of my baby--now almost 10 years ago--when he, too, was connected to life by a tether of plastic, air pumping into his too-small nose. He had so much dying to do before he left, and so much living in between those breaths of canned air.
My son is dying. I am dying.
So why would I worry about a handful of books (beautiful "Folio" editions of the four great Shakespearean tragedies: King Lear, Othello, Macbeth, and, of course, Hamlet, as well as scholarship of Samuel Johnson and Harold Bloom) when we're all drifting toward the exit?
I'm reminded of the lyrics of a song I listened to in the '90s...and still now, twenty years later, if I'm being honest. It comes from the band Live, a song called "Dance With You". The song is moving, particularly one part of the chorus. "I see a world where people/Live and die with grace."
Despite being of a different generation--of viewing the world through younger eyes--I could see a man dying with grace. He was bequeathing something important to him to someone who would also see the importance of the bequest. I am dying just as certainly as he, but my timeline is (God willing) a little bit longer. Graciously, he passed a piece of himself on.
Would that I could always see the world where people so live...
...and die.