Floating Away

*Originally posted on 12.14.2017 on previous blog

A local civic leader died unexpectedly the other day.  He had put in a full day's work, complete with press conference and department meetings, and was doing his after work grocery shopping when he collapsed.  He was taken by ambulance to the hospital and declared dead a couple of hours later.  Imagine that.  He's standing in front of the butcher counter thinking about what to get for dinner and what the kids might need for school lunches tomorrow and Poof! Gone.  That's worth considering.

Those holiday plans he was excited about (or dreading)?  Vanished.  That dental appointment that he was postponing?  No need to fret about that anymore.   The political direction of the country? No longer an issue.  The unresolved argument he had with his daughter the other night? It will forever be unresolved .  Nothing matters to him anymore.  He has been released.

HIs death is a very real reminder that all these little things that we struggle with? None of them really matter all that much.  When you die, all that stuff just goes away.  You go away.  Or at least you go away in this existence.  Maybe there is a new way of being but apparently you disappear from your life the way you knew it and the way we knew you in it.  It's worthwhile to think about that from time to time and maybe that's one reason why people die.  They die so the rest of us can remember that all that little stuff doesn't really matter.

 They were talking on the radio about this man's legacy.  For what will he be remembered?   And that's a reality check as well.  Remembered?  For how long?  Maybe people in the community will still be talking about him in twenty years. Maybe even in forty years his name will fall into conversations here and there.  In sixty years I'm pretty sure he will just be a Wikipedia entry.  And he's in Wikipedia because he's well known.  Me?  In sixty years the best I can hope for is to be a photo in some long discarded family album.  And, huh, it won't matter. Period.  He's gone.  I will be gone.  Some words in Wikipedia or a photo in an album are like one strand of hair on a body during one summer of a life.  In other words, they are almost nothing compared to the whole life of the being.

I guess this is just to say, pay attention.  Pay attention to what doesn't mater.  Maybe stay curious about  life and what is unfolding.  Maybe avoid getting too riled up when things don't go the way you planned.  Practice making room for the unexpected, for the unknowable.  Make room for the mysterious.  Take in the days, one at a time, until one day you, too,  float away.