I just finished reading Roger Ebert's memoir, "Life Itself." As a former Chicagoan now living in Arizona, it brought back memories of reading Gene Siskel at the Chicago Tribune and Ebert at the Sun Times. How sad that both are now dead. Even more, it brought back memories of being young and I miss that time. My wife keeps telling me I have to live in the present, but I keep wanting to return to an earlier time when I can undo the mistakes I made and, perhaps, do it better.
The end of Ebert's book is a rumination on the end of life. Ebert is characteristically uncomplaining and, while not looking forward to death, not fearful about that unknown country. After three operations that left him unable to eat on his own and speak, he remains (well, since he's dead now, remains) curious about what his remaining years will bring and even speculates on where the universe is headed in it's expansion and where and how it all started. Even at the end of his book and, as it turned out, his life, he's still contributing to the conversation in which we all engage.
I am scared to death of death. I have so many regrets. If only I could go back in time to those moments when I made choices I regret so that I could choose differently. Flunking out of college. Quitting writing when it seemed I was moving closer and closer to publication. The way I treated my father and mother, never being really close to either. Now not being able to have a conversation with either of them.
Ebert lived with hope while I despair. I know the importance of living in the here and now, recognizing that regrets serve no purpose. Yet I'm drawn, like Gatsby is described at the end of The Great Gatsby, ceaselessly into the past. "Can't redo the past, old sport? Of course you can." If only.
Yet the past is always with us or, as Faulkner noted, it's not even past. If I really connected with the fact of my death, would I live more fully now? Would I love more completely? Would I forgive myself and others more readily...would I forgive at all?
I can't imagine my end. I can imagine it, but I can't...imagine it. The world without me? Consciousness is a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it gives us the opportunity to be alive to our lives. A curse because it gives us the awareness of our end. How much better to be my dog, seemingly living in the moment without a care in the world.
How does one live in the moment? Is it even possible? Isn't that the intent of meditation? Just days before the author and Zen monk Peter Matthiessen died, the New York Times Magazine had a profile of him in which he said (paraphrasing here) that it's a miracle if one can be present, truly present for even five minutes.
There was a moment when I was present. Years ago. Perhaps thirty. I and some friends were driving from Chicago to Door County, Wisconsin for a long weekend. The car broke down on a deserted stretch of highway about fifty minutes south of our destination. It was 10 pm. Pitch black. No headlights to be seen in either direction. No lights at all.
I opened the trunk and rummaged through my suitcase to get the running shoes I knew were there. At that time, I was training to run a marathon and was in the best shape of my life. Completely unperturbed, I put on the shoes. My wife asked me what I was doing. I had seen a sign saying that a gas station could be found about a mile or so up the road. Without a moment's concern, I was prepared to run down this dark highway to that gas station. The car breaking down and the run I was contemplating occurred to me like a grand adventure. I felt alive, present, giddy with excitement.
At that exact moment, as though summoned by our thoughts, a police car came up behind us. We were rescued.
When I try to think of moments when I felt fully alive and present, those few moments by the side of the road in the darkness, keep coming back. I'm sure there were others, but I recall the time on that highway so vividly. I wasn't meditating, trying to be in the present moment. I was in the present moment.
How to recapture that excitement at being alive? How indeed.
No comments:
Post a Comment