What's It All About?
Dear Friend,
What is the essence of a person?
Are we simply a jumble of fears, desires, and habits, rolled into one incoherent whole? Are we the sum total of the love we share with others? Are we bags of mostly water that move around a bit on the surface of an obscure planet, and then blend back into the regolith?
Yes, I know that this is deep, rather esoteric stuff. Perhaps not very practical, and I love to tie the complex with the real, tangible here and now. But I participated in the writing of a eulogy for my friend’s funeral today and it seemed on reflection that it was the moments of humor, the smiles and warmth of a greeting, the complexities of personality that take others by surprise, that others define a person by. And it is generally only upon death that such things are considered.
Some people say that we should live life like we’ll die tomorrow, other that we should live like we’ll live forever. I think that if I knew I was going to die tomorrow, I would be too much in shock to do much of anything. If I knew that I would live forever, I might not worry so much about every setback or the pace of my progress. On the other hand, I might “waste” my life with trivial things. But then again, what are “trivial” things?
People spend their lives planning for a future that rarely comes, trying to make money they probably don’t need. Working and spending a great deal of their lives with people they don’t really like. All because life is short, and hard, and they have to get ahead while they can, so that the good life will finally bless them.
What if people spent their time listening to a four year old babbling about something not quite coherent, but clearly important to her? What if people spent more time examining the shimmering nature of an otherwise ordinary tree? What if people wasted so much time that they discovered what the world really looked like? What if they discovered that the trivial things are all that really matter in life?
Just some thoughts. What do you think?
Talk to you soon.
Hugh
