Eluding Death, Pursuing Life

              I’ve heard so much lately about how young people take risks because they feel that they are beyond harm or death, that they believe themselves to be invincible. And while I get it – after all, I took my own share of thoughtless risks in my early years – it wasn’t because I felt invulnerable. I never felt that way.

My carelessness was another thing altogether. Usually it was a matter of focusing on things other than any apparent risk, like whatever I was trying to get (sex, very likely), or what I was trying to avoid (like embarrassment or shame). At other times – maybe even most of the time – I just wasn’t thinking. When I was young, it was easy to get caught up in the moment. Or in my emotions. I often didn’t even recognize those risks that adults thought I wasn’t taking seriously, until I was seeing them in the rear view mirror. Being oblivious – or pre-occupied – may make it appear that a young person thinks they’re invulnerable or immune, but that sure isn’t how I remember feeling.

I don’t know that I ever felt particularly safe or secure when I was young. I had doubts about everything. And I spent lots of time imagining horrible outcomes to my actions and inactions. It’s just that my worries and concerns weren’t the ones that adults thought I should be pre-occupied with. So, for example, I wasn’t nearly as worried about catching a venereal disease as I was about not getting laid and there being zero possibility of catching one.

              Life for the young is about living, and there’s great insecurity in fearing that life could end before real living has even begun. Bad possibilities abound. And don’t the worse possibilities involve not getting the things we dream of?

              Compared to me in my twenties, it’s the 66 year old I’ve become who has a cavalier attitude about risk and death. And it still has little to do with thinking I’m invulnerable. Of course I’m not invulnerable. It’s very clear to me that I’m just a tiny speck of life in a vast universe, and that I can be obliterated instantly. Existence provides no effective insurance policy.

              It’s just that death isn’t so threatening to me anymore. Not in the way it used to be. Because now, I’ve been there and I’ve done that. Not nearly everything, of course. But enough to know that I’ve been, I’ve existed. And though I’m but the merest speck of being, I’ve danced with this universe that surrounds me.

              I’ve tipped over my share of dominoes. I’ve negotiated a few forks in the road, turning one possibility into reality and relegating another to what-might-have-been. And while I don’t believe in anything like heaven or hell, I do believe that a sort of cosmic recycling is at work, from which nothing escapes. It’s not that I expect to ever be ‘me’ again after my physical death, but something of me will be part of something else that will come into being. So I can’t really be afraid of dying in the way I used to.

I say all this without having had kids, which is one of the treasures I once looked forward to as a defining component of my future. That failing stands as my life’s biggest disappointment. But the fact of it hasn’t soured or crushed me, and it has contributed to an acceptance or understanding that I will try to put into words, though I’m not sure I can.

I had a daughter who didn’t quite make it into this world. She came along late in my life, when I’d given up the dream and had already begun to mourn. And she was unplanned, a surprise. I immediately began to imagine who she was, who she might become. With no evidence of it, I decided that we were being given a daughter. And I named her Flame. And she immediately began to impact my life, and the life of her mother, and our relationship.

Her mother and I made life choices in preparation for becoming Flame’s parents and welcoming her into the world. I can’t describe for you – but many of you parents must know better than I – the thrill and excitement of preparing to bring a new Earthling to life. It gave me future vision like I didn’t know was possible, suddenly projecting my awareness years and decades into the future.

Flame turned out to have a serious, genetic defect, and within a few days of us receiving and beginning to digest that news, her mother miscarried. Flame never made it into this world. But I realized soon after that Flame had already changed us in irreversible ways. We had set our lives on different paths, and new doors had already opened, while others had closed. And so much newness and beauty has continued to flow into our lives ever since. I think frequently of Flame, the daughter I never got to know except inside a dream inside of my heart. And yet, she’s had as real an effect on me as anyone else I’ve known in life.

So what’s there to fear about dying? It isn’t that I don’t want to go on living. I love my life, and while I’m not one of those who would like to live forever, I hope that I have a good bit more of it to look forward to. There are still some things I’d like to see and do. But also many others things that I’ve accepted I never will. At this point, death can’t take anything away that I need to hold onto.

Even as I write this, I can see what an odd thing it is to express. Especially now, when the world is being turned on its head by this wave of sickness, when so many are dying suddenly and unexpectedly. And often needlessly, from the taking of thoughtless or defiant risks. I guess that we all fear death in some way, if only in the same way that we tense up in anticipation of the unknown. For many of us, there’s concern about how we might die, hoping it won’t be painful, or that we don’t hang for long in a borderland of misery.

But for the young – if I remember correctly and am not just projecting backwards – the fear is mostly about the unrealized potential that may be snatched away. And good for them if they are so busy pursuing life that they give death little thought. My most heartfelt advice to them would not be that they be more careful. In the words attributed to Goethe, “Boldness has beauty, power and magic in it!” And in the end, isn’t it the things we haven’t done and haven’t tried that we regret most?