Barring their discovery by some distant digital archeological expedition of the future, and maybe a few readers here, these musings are so dilute among the countless electrons (and holes in silicon, to be accurate) of the galaxy as to be as nothing. Yet, they’re all that remain of me: a tiny, irrelevancy without force in the vast universe.
Looking back in what memories remain, I’m amazed at the illusions I created for myself. Illusions I had some power in the world. Illusions of invulnerability, even as I watched my son’s fervor for “cheat codes” for immortality in video games. Death was something I imagined happened to old people, not me. The occasional young person who died was a rare anomaly. After all, how many “you shouldn’t do that”s had I survived unscathed?
Back then, I sometimes catalogued pleasant moments as future fond memories I might someday reclaim. Well, as I watch my wife, Gigi, slowly decline from an incurable cancer (so far for 33 months, significantly exceeding her life expectancy at diagnosis) and experience my own diminishment with mere age - there are no more moments to be filed for the future. There is only the present.
Fortunately for me, I have been given the gift of gratitude for ordinary moments. These escaped me most of my life. Chores and tasks, for me, were moments when I “held my breath” - so to speak. They were “time outs”, after whose completion, life would resume. Happily, I no longer experience it that way.
During my many daily tasks - taking care of Gigi’s needs - preventing plates/utensils/food containers from piling up - feeding/watering our two beloved Ragdoll cats (Theo and Rudey) - even wiping Rudey’s behind many days because of a messy problem - I feel gratitude, almost exclusively. Since I have never had control of my feelings with will power, I know that I could not have willed myself to feel gratitude.
Actually, I only first experienced gratitude at age 47 while in drug/alcohol rehab. There, when I behaved badly to a group of counselors, one of them - I was shocked! - treated me with kindness in response. It took me a half and hour (after running out of the room in tears) to figure out that I was feeling gratitude for the gift of his kindness - which I had not earned or otherwise made happen. It was the first time in my life I ever had the experience of receiving a gift. Typical addict (until then) I thought I controlled everything which ever had come my way - until that moment. It was the beginning of my recovery and humanization.
I also now realize how much I loved many more people than I knew I loved over the entire course of my life. I’m saddened that I never understood and never told most of them. I’m often overwhelmed by the sheer amount of suffering in the world. I pray each night for the people I know (living and dead) and for relief of their suffering. Sometimes I think back to the fact (I learned it here, on Scanalyst) that it’s estimated that 120 billion human beings have lived since humans came into existence. The vast, vast majority of those lives were, undoubtedly, “nasty, brutish and short”.
Further, it seems obvious to me that despite unprecedented material sufficiency, humanity is tearing apart the most decent real structures and nations it has evolved by trial and error (“iteration” in engineering parlance), in favor of ideologies - all rooted on one thing: power over others. It looks to me like an impending return to some technologically-enhanced form of feudalism; power-mad liege lords-in-waiting are all over the “news”. I will likely depart fearing for my children and grandchildren. That may be the worst part of life’s winter: knowing I will not be there in their times of difficulty. The golden age in which I have lived is coming to a rapid and increasingly violent and evil end.
It is apparent my gratitude as to the small things is tempered by sadness over the past and the future. I often fall asleep trying to recall all the individual and abstract human suffering I wish God might relieve. Again I’m reminded of how much of the physical and mental effort - for most of my life - was dedicated to trying to keep such thoughts and awareness at bay: if I convince myself I have some power in the world, maybe, just maybe I’m not vulnerable or mortal after all.
Philosophically, I believe the many visible tyrants-in-waiting throughout the world (and now, shockingly among us, here), are motivated by the same dysfunction. “If I can control large numbers of people, society, a nation, maybe, just maybe I have God-like power and will become immortal”. Writ large, then as it is, this lust for power transcends the ordinary human task of learning to accept mortality. In denying mortality, such people become evil incarnate. That, I believe is what is unfolding before our eyes, “live and in living (dying?) color”.
(Please excuse typos and errors of all sorts. I can now barely type a few words without several errors and then make errors correcting those I do see. If only I didn’t remember having once been competent).
