It just so happened that I was bored and listening to an old audiobook podcast called 'The Last Lecture'. It was rather phenomenal when the author actually died of pancreatic cancer. I know I had listened to half of it before and never finished it for some odd reason. But in the first few minutes of listening again a few things clicked.
The first thing I remember was that I was trying to write in my blog, when I first heard the audiobook was that I wanted it to be something my kids would learn from. And immediately I realized that I have been and continue to take my own life for granted. Although it has happened that I woke up one morning profoundly thankful to God for my very own existence, most of the time I am acting as if I have plenty of time. But implicit in that is a kind of, if I die tomorrow so what? I'm always living my life in a sort of 'this is as good as it gets' mood, and I often take imaginary time-travels back to my former self to brag about what's going on in my life which is objectively better. Nevertheless, I know that I haven't told my kids everything I want them to know. I think I can live with that. I do indeed live in the moment.
But what of my writing? If anything, I know that my writing is always an open kind of exploratory journal of philosophical dimensions. It assumes very little is settled. I've probably written a good 40% of the comments here, which I think is rare for bloggers of my ilk. It's all about 'the fullness of time', which is another way of saying that if I die tomorrow, so what? It doesn't need to be finished. It doesn't need to be definitive. It just needs to continue. And that's what you hear.
Then I came back around to the conceit, tangential to the raging and bloviation that I inevitably have to do in the wake of my understanding of Jonah Goldberg. That is about the general fascination with 'The Last Lecture' itself. You basically have this college professor make peace with death. Why is that so fascinating? It's something every good Christian should have done, and by good Christian I mean John Brown good. So I'm imagining all of my metrosexual, athiest, nemeses rambling on with their therapists or with their yoga group or in a corner after a Zocalo featuring Villaraigosa at the Skirball over lattes in hushed reverent voices about the courage of that professor.
Everybody is going to die. Get it? Why do people keep acting as if it's not going to happen? Why don't those inevitable gallows focus their minds? I don't know, I don't really care to know. I'm just stuck on serious at that deep level. Damned Jesuits.
So I contented myself with the second conceit which is that every two months or so, I deliver at least four large bags of ex-consumer goods to the Salvation Army. I'm one of those guys with the nice watch who enjoys ambling slowly around to his broad expansive trunk of his car to pull out goods of some value. Although for about 18 months now, I've been wanting to be the guy with a flat stomach pulling something backbreaking out of the back of a Hummer or Avalanche. But, either way, it's all good.
So the as life continues. I do wonder why all the shouting...
Which reminds me of one more thing. I did read some good portion of 'A Christmas Carol' the other day, and I couldn't help but notice how much of the moral import of the story relied on Dickens notion of the (after) life of ghosts. The concept of treading the earth for an eternity, bound by chains built of your sins and able to see all of human suffering without the slightest bit of ability to alleviate it. That is hellish.
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