― Woody Allen
Youth enjoys a certain blindness.
If you had asked me at the end of tenth grade where I planned to go to college and what I planned to study, I would have squirmed and looked at you with panic. Those are such typical grown-up questions, I'd think -- to ask me about what I planned to do so far in advance. "Maybe Stanford or Georgetown," I would have replied politely. "Maybe become a teacher or a diplomat." Yeah, right. I could have said, just as easily and truthfully, that I planned to go to Ole Miss and become a professional stamp collector.
Two full years until I'd be heading for college. Two years now is a blink of the eye. But at the time, college felt like something that would happen in a far-distant mythical future. Even my senior year of high school seemed remote.
As the time to head off for college drew nearer, college of course played a more prominent role in my mind. College board exams to take, applications to fill out, letters of recommendation to obtain. But by the summer following high school graduation, even with college acceptance in hand and deposit paid, "going to college" was a future event that my mind still couldn't grasp. As I wrote in a book review in this blog in 2007:
As I looked ahead, my summer seemed destined, unlike earlier summers, to end abruptly in a massive wall of dense fog. On the other side of the wall, I knew, would be a move to California, palm trees, the university, dorm life, roommates, a future existence unlike anything I could imagine.
When I look back on that final summer before college, it seems to have lasted as long and as lazily and as uneventfully as any other childhood summer. My younger brother and I did take off on a two-week bike and camping trip (to the horror of my mother). And I did go north with my family for a short visit to Vancouver. Otherwise, the memories of that summer are vague.
What was critical was my awareness that an enormous change in my life would occur in late September. What is odd is that this awareness had so little effect on my daily summer existence. Even a week before freshman orientation began, I was still living the life of an obedient child, minding (for the most part) his parents. And then, suddenly, I was standing with my dad at the train station, waiting for the southbound train that would whisk me off to California -- separated from home and family far more completely than today's digitally-connected kids can grasp -- until Christmas.
It was exciting and I was eager for the experience. But it also represented a small death. My 15-year-old brother reminded me, with awe in his voice, "This is the end of your childhood." The death of childhood, of dependence on parents, of the life with which I had been familiar for 18 years.
And now, of course, many years later, I have to contemplate a greater death at some point in the future. Unlike with college, I don't know the scheduled starting date. I know I'm in remarkably good health for my age. That suggests that my lifespan will be longer than average -- but I don't know for certain. I could have a heart attack tomorrow. (For that matter, like all of us, I could be run over by a bus tomorrow!) At any rate, whenever it occurs, my death -- sooner now rather than later -- is certain. Only the exact timing remains to be determined.
The entire summer before college, I "knew" my old life as a child was nearly over. And yet I "felt" that it would go on forever. I couldn't visualize life after September, and every instinct told me I should therefore not think that much about it. I'm surprised how similarly I react now to the approach of death. I feel a similar sense of denial. Even if I knew I had only a month to live, I probably would spend most of that month doing the same trivial daily tasks, indulging in the same random daydreams, that I do now -- just as I spent my last summer as a child, unable to imagine and therefore react to the momentous event that lay in store for me.
That final summer before college was an enjoyable summer. Nothing would have been gained by keeping myself on pins and needles, worrying daily about my future. My lack of imagination -- that "certain blindness" -- protected me from panic. It seems to do the same trick now, keeping me focused on those things amenable to my focus -- not pondering excessively the imponderable.
4 comments:
I thoroughly enjoyed this essay. Thank you for writing and posting it. My short response is to say "spot on" and I agree. Everything else I add is superfluous jabber talk but it seems comments are invited so I will accept the invitation and blab on.
1. I like the analogy or comparison with the leaving for college experience, and the "small death" that is experienced there. So true, so true. That we do experience "small deaths" throughout our lives. The analogy is especially meaningful for me because not long ago, a little over a year ago, I brought my eldest child to his college and said goodbye to him. Until then, he had never been away from home more than a week, at a summer camp or school excursion. He had also never been outside of Japan or in the United States for more than two weeks at a time, for summer visits with Grandma in Minnesota. So this was a huge leap. Yet, the day came closer for his departure, the daily routine was the same, nothing seemed different. It was only when we would look at the calendar and deliberately thought about the fact that soon Steven would no longer be sleeping in his bed, no longer eating at our dining room table, that we each felt a surreal quality. How can everything seem so ordinary and normal when an earthshaking event was just about to happen. Why aren't trumpets blaring? Why is there no drum roll?
2. I also experienced a "small death" recently ending 30 years as a full time law firm lawyer, over 25 years of those at the same last firm. Due to circumstances, I needed to leave at the end of the year. I had felt burnt out for a while and common sense would say, a change would be good for everyone. But still, it was very difficult for me to end my daily routine and to accept a change in social identity. Although it is a cliche, when the dreaded and feared change actually happened, it has not been all bad.
3. In the "old days" people sometimes feared death due to a strong belief in heaven and hell. It is my impression that people fear hell less today, and that the primary fear is the fear of ....what do we call it....extinction? nothingness? non-existence? lack of consciousness? Sometimes I wonder, was it rational for people to fear hell then (and to wish to die praying or having just received the last rites, various "tricks" or gimmicks to avoid hell and gain a ticket to heaven or at least purgatory) and is it rational that we don't fear hell now? I mean, was there really strong evidence then for it and is there strong evidence now against it? it seems to be a social phenomenon, you share the beliefs of your community, and community beliefs don't follow the rules of logic like a geometric proof. That may be good, because, deeper relevant reality may be more accurately ascertained via intuitive senses than deliberate logical thinking. Or maybe not, I don't know. I just know that I don't really fear hell, and it is not just because I was raised to believe that Jesus would take care of that business for me. I think it is partly because such fear is no longer in the air I breathe in everyday society.
4. I agree with the idea that, it is just as well that we live in denial and carry on our ordinary daily routines. That is probably partly what Martin Luther was trying to get at when he said, if the world were to end tomorrow, he would spend today planting a tree.
5. You here aphorisms or life-advice-wisdom that say "live in the moment." That would agree with your approach of not fretting about death or trying to prepare for it so much. You sometimes do here a contrary idea, to "live each day as if it were to be your last." The problem is, so what do you do on your last day? It sounds a bit frantic. So denial and living in the moment seems better.
6. I do wonder though: (1) whether there is some healthy balance between total denial and over-preparing for death, that is desirable, and as a related matter, (2) for life planning, making big decisions in life, the same question, whether there might not be a healthy mid-point that is not over-analysis or fretting of what might have been, but does involve healthy reflection and wise consideration of options and possible changes of course in life, rather than just taking things as they come.
7. One consolation to me is that as far as I can see, people generally in the end die fairly peacefully. They are tired and worn out and ready to go, to drift off to sleep. If is different if you are in a falling airplane--that would be a frantic, panic situation. But most of us, although we dread having to go through illness and pain, we will probably almost welcome death when it comes because we are not feeling very comfortable, and it just seems that the time is right. My brother Craig was shocked and saddened when he got brain cancer at 62 but after struggling for a few months with a very aggressive, quick spreading debilitating illness, he whispered "I want to go home." He also whispered to some people that came to pray for him "I am so thankful." And he beamed when his daughter told him she was pregnant with his first grandchild.
8. I guess I am a product of the spoiled, American entitlement mentality, where we embrace our rights and are quick to announced that we are victims of unfairness but we can sometimes be slow to embrace responsibility. I read somewhere that the English missionary to China who was a star track star in "The Chariots of Fire" Eric Liddell never questioned God when things happened. He felt it was not our lot to question God or the fate we are given, but rather, we accept what life and God give us without question and serve faithfully. Man...........I am soooooooo different. What a grasshopper I am, compared to the Temple Master Eric Liddell. I expect that if God is loving and just, then life should be a rose garden for me. I don't expect to win every sports contest, and I guess I can understand that I might have a girl like somebody else more than me and so that I need to work a bit to find success at love and work and other things. But basically I feel that if God is who they say he is, then the whole world should be like Denmark or Sweden or Norway (but without that one hiccup of a mass shooter). But it is not. Actually, as to my own personal life, I can't complain, I think my problems are 80% self-inflicted and that it has not been unfair. But when if it should turn out that there is no life after death, then I will be VERY upset. :( And God will have some explaining to do. I feel I am owed life after death. I can't give a logical justification for it, so I guess it is just good ol' American entitlement thinking, along perhaps with some white privilege thinking. :)
9. My own son in elementary school shocked me once though. I was whining about how we don't live forever on this earth, that we all die, and he said "I don't know if I'd want to live forever." Hopefully it isn't because his life was one of suffering and agony or boredom. But I think what he meant was, everything and anything after a while gets old. Been there, done that, and we want a change in routine. So that if life just dragged on and on for over 1,000 years, at some point, it might get very old. :) And maybe we would almost welcome death. It still don't totally have my mind wrapped around that way of thinking, but it did shake me up a bit out of my stupor.
well, those are the random thoughts that flowed from the synapses of my brain. But I AM grateful for your post and this opportunity to comment. I feel that in our American society, in order to fit in, we must be light hearted and cheerful and avoid self-obsessing too much, including about mortality. A joke here and there is OK, but no more than that. And maybe that is good, but it leaves me a bit frustrated. I would like to discuss it more, engage with the topic, even if it doesn't lead to any sure answer. And I DON'T want to do it with a professional therapist, partly because I am cheap, and partly, I feel that it is something you should be able to do with your friends at a pub or at a cafe, like a philosophers pub in Paris, or something. But it isn't the case.
So, anyway, thank you very much. Good essay. I can see why the Russians are reading your essays by the tens of thousands! Pretty soon you may be on some TV talk show on a panel with an orthodox priest and a Russian Oprah Winfrey talking about some of the deeper aspects of life and the human condition. Thank you and spa-see-ba.
Спасибо огромное! Лучшие комментарии, которые я когда-либо получал в своем блоге. :-))
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