Live Life Like You're Gonna Die
I have a secret....
I really like William Shatner's singing. I liked his kookie talking-to-the-music style from rocketman to Common People.
I even enjoy, if enjoy is the right word, Live Life Like You're Gonna Die. The lyrics, darkly humored as they are, state a simple truth over and over again:
'Cause maybe you won't suffer maybe it's quick
But you have time to think
Why did I waste it?
Why didn't I taste it?
You'll have time 'cause you're gonna die
Over the past several years I have, quite morbidly, developed a subconscious way of approaching people, especially during times of friction and conflict and it was quite easily summed up in those lyrics above, with a minor, minor twist:
Live life like they're gonna die
That might need explanation...I've known, and loved, too many people who have passed on. People in their teens, 20s, 30s, 40s, 60s, 80s, 90s. Accidents. Disease. Once, through grim improbability, I witnessed a suicide. I've been the last person to whisper in someone's ear as they have passed on. While certainly no expert on the subject, I know that life is too precious and too unpredictable to be taken for granted.
And that's really what we do when we get angry at someone we care about, or when we get angry at someone whose approval we are seeking. We take them for granted, since the act of being angry with them, of judging and distancing from them, is to punish them, to seek some emotional equilibrium and that takes for granted the idea that they will be around long enough for this process to work itself through. When we have been wronged, it is too easy to transform someone into an ideal and forget that they are, in reality, a human -- and quite temporarily so.
My mother tells the story of the last time she saw her father alive -- he had stopped by her house unannounced, which was odd for him. They spoke a bit, nothing substantial. When he went to leave she was in the kitchen and she was overwhelmed with the thought "what if this is the last time I ever see him again?" With that thought, she made a point of stopping what she was doing and gave him a hug and a kiss goodbye. He died shortly thereafter, I cannot remember by how many days, of a massive heart attack.
And so, while I am completely reconciled to living life like I'm going to die, that isn't the thought that keeps me up at night. The thought that really keeps me up at night is that "they" are going to die -- those "they" that I have come to love and need in my life. And it helps take the edge off of family feuds, because when someone is gone, there is no chance for them to right past wrongs. There is no chance to hear them say I'm sorry, or for you to say you're sorry. If you are particularly unlucky, as I was particularly unlucky many years ago, you are left with the sadness that the time you did have left with someone was spent in a chess-match of frustration and anger.
I'm known by all as a "hugger" now. Linda's poor brothers, all four of them, have given in and all give me a big hug during family get-togethers... and then shake each other's hands. I don't care. In each of those hugs there is the smallest hint, through some improbability on my part or theirs, that this is my last chance to do so. I could not bear to think it a chance wasted.
-Ed
I really like William Shatner's singing. I liked his kookie talking-to-the-music style from rocketman to Common People.
I even enjoy, if enjoy is the right word, Live Life Like You're Gonna Die. The lyrics, darkly humored as they are, state a simple truth over and over again:
'Cause maybe you won't suffer maybe it's quick
But you have time to think
Why did I waste it?
Why didn't I taste it?
You'll have time 'cause you're gonna die
Over the past several years I have, quite morbidly, developed a subconscious way of approaching people, especially during times of friction and conflict and it was quite easily summed up in those lyrics above, with a minor, minor twist:
That might need explanation...I've known, and loved, too many people who have passed on. People in their teens, 20s, 30s, 40s, 60s, 80s, 90s. Accidents. Disease. Once, through grim improbability, I witnessed a suicide. I've been the last person to whisper in someone's ear as they have passed on. While certainly no expert on the subject, I know that life is too precious and too unpredictable to be taken for granted.
And that's really what we do when we get angry at someone we care about, or when we get angry at someone whose approval we are seeking. We take them for granted, since the act of being angry with them, of judging and distancing from them, is to punish them, to seek some emotional equilibrium and that takes for granted the idea that they will be around long enough for this process to work itself through. When we have been wronged, it is too easy to transform someone into an ideal and forget that they are, in reality, a human -- and quite temporarily so.
My mother tells the story of the last time she saw her father alive -- he had stopped by her house unannounced, which was odd for him. They spoke a bit, nothing substantial. When he went to leave she was in the kitchen and she was overwhelmed with the thought "what if this is the last time I ever see him again?" With that thought, she made a point of stopping what she was doing and gave him a hug and a kiss goodbye. He died shortly thereafter, I cannot remember by how many days, of a massive heart attack.
And so, while I am completely reconciled to living life like I'm going to die, that isn't the thought that keeps me up at night. The thought that really keeps me up at night is that "they" are going to die -- those "they" that I have come to love and need in my life. And it helps take the edge off of family feuds, because when someone is gone, there is no chance for them to right past wrongs. There is no chance to hear them say I'm sorry, or for you to say you're sorry. If you are particularly unlucky, as I was particularly unlucky many years ago, you are left with the sadness that the time you did have left with someone was spent in a chess-match of frustration and anger.
I'm known by all as a "hugger" now. Linda's poor brothers, all four of them, have given in and all give me a big hug during family get-togethers... and then shake each other's hands. I don't care. In each of those hugs there is the smallest hint, through some improbability on my part or theirs, that this is my last chance to do so. I could not bear to think it a chance wasted.
-Ed
posted by Ed at 1:25 AM
1 Comments:
As always, your perspective has really brought things into clarity, and provided food for though.
Thanks... I needed this.
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