fleeting thoughts

Last updated on 2 May 2020

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

— William Shakespeare

We’re here. And then we’re not. I realized this while watching my father die over the course of a month a little more than a year ago. 

All his living, all the things he thought and said and loved and feared disappeared with his final breaths. He is gone. And I am still here with the memories of my experiences with him. 

I don’t know for certain what his last thoughts were. I don’t know how aware he was that he was about to die. Was he afraid? Was he sad? Angry? Did he regret things left undone and unsaid? Were there places he wished he had seen? 

Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose
he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it.
But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life
that one exists for other people.

—Albert Einstein

Of his relationships, how did he feel? Did he do his best in this life? 

I think about him and how fleeting this life really is. If we’re lucky our bodies function well and we live eight, nine decades. We don’t get hit by a car or fall out of a window or get hit by lightning. And we don’t get struck down by cancer.

Doesn’t it sound silly to get so caught up in so many of the things that command our attention? What car we drive. What phone we have. All the things we want. How we let the things we buy own us. Even the thought of living our lives through the lenses of Instagram and Facebook. 

Then there is the whole arena of our relationships with people. Why do we care so deeply what others, especially strangers or people whose ties to us are limited, think? Why do we so often diminish ourselves in relation to others, even placing them above us? 

Why, also, is the talk in our own heads often so derogatory about ourselves? 

Comparing oneself to others is an automatic feel bad.

A smart man once told me “Comparing oneself to others is an automatic feel bad.” He couldn’t have been more insightful. That notion has swirled around my brain since I heard it twenty years ago. Why, then, do we do it?

There are certain things in life that, if we’re open, give us clarity that we could not have otherwise. The death of a parent, child, husband, wife, even beloved pet, is one of those experiences. A near death experience, such as an accident or being sideswiped by cancer or other serious disease also can do that. 

So, too, do positive experiences. Several years ago my wife and I took four of our kids on a spring break vacation out west. We went to Arizona and hiked through Lower Antelope Canyon with a Native American guide, a young man with grace and a kind of athleticism that I admired. We made it to the Grand Canyon and hiked down and on our way back up it started snowing. I can look at the photos from our trip and still recall the sublime warmth and joy I felt being around my children and my wife. I thought, “there is nothing better than this.”

Each day, I see more clearly a narrowing of the things that should command my attention. As I’ve aged, what I truly value has evolved to a definable threshold. 

Life is finite and so too is our capacity to focus on what truly matters.

I can only care about so much. Life is finite and so too is our capacity to focus on what truly matters. Every time I find myself wanting to buy and own something, I ask myself “why do I want this?” What is it about owning a certain thing over a certain other thing that pleases us, even if we know the rush of owning it is short-lived? 

Psychologists tell us that we experience a biochemical reaction when we buy something. So too when we get “likes” on a post on Instagram or a new “friend” on Facebook. The literature is deep and wide on what can become an addiction to buying or living our lives on social media. 

Every so often I get caught up in my wants for likes even though I know most of these people are liking my post out of some polite quid pro quo. You liked my post so I’ll like yours. It’s as if I need to be noticed.

This feels a lot like a crossroads for me. Increasingly aware that my time on this earth and with these people is gradually dwindling, I find myself questioning what I focus on, what I worry about and where my attention goes. 

It’s as if I had climbed a mountain and planted my nation’s flag on the summit…

I recently posted on Instagram the three values with which I believe I align the most. It was as much for me as it was for the people with whom I’m connected. It’s as if I had climbed a mountain and planted my nation’s flag on the summit, which I picture as a very narrow place with not a lot of room for others nor a lot of flags. 

We all have our summits to ascend and flags to plant. We can’t have everything nor be everybody’s friend. It’s easy to get a little frantic, scurrying between acquiring things and likes. But I wonder what value it really gives us in return. Is the fleeting pleasure of the new car or sweater or espresso machine or the 100 likes on our post that important to how we feel about our lives when we get near the end?

It is better, I suppose, to have a very tight circle of people we can love with our whole hearts and friends to whom we can unabashedly give, and a few things we can own which give us genuine pleasure than to drive on the crowded superhighway things and likes.

We’re here. And then we’re not. 

Life is just a party and parties weren’t made to last.

— Prince