I was listening the other day to actor Jeremy Renner on the Smartless podcast, and he spoke at length about the accident that nearly killed him. You may recall that he was run over by a snowplow on New Year's Day of last year, while saving his nephew from being run over. In the show, he describes the whole affair as the greatest gift he could have, because it gave him perspective. It caused him to necessarily come to terms with his inevitable end, and that in turn has completely changed his outlook and how all the things affect him.
He's only a few years older than me, so this is something that I think about too. I haven't had the potentially life altering brush with death, and I don't really want to, but I do want to get where he is. I'm comfortable with the idea that I won't live forever, that none of us will, but that realization has not caused me to keep the perspective to just let all the things roll off. I feel like I'm carrying weight at all times, from work, parenting, setting up my later years for success, and lately, deep concern for the state of my country. I feel at times like that's all crushing me.
Logically, I think there are really only two places that you can arrive when you face your impending demise. The dark and not good place is that you don't see any point to life. The other place is to accept that you will have the impact that you do, measurable in a million ways, and that's the point. The really crazy part of it is that both of those conclusions are fed by the same facts. Given the Law of the Conservation of Mass, we're literally made of cosmic dust, and when we're done, we'll be that again. In between, against all odds, we gain consciousness and autonomy. Again, this makes life either pointless or impactful, depending on how you look at things. As a species that reproduces, my thinking is that the impact is important because it affects your offspring, and generations beyond. But either way, our importance is overstated in our heads. As unlikely and incredible as our consciousness is, it is quite temporary and insignificant relative to the history of time.
That, perhaps, is where the gift lies. If we are relatively inconsequential, and you take up the positive, it creates a moral framework that should be obvious. Be kind to others, make art, help out, leave things better than you found them. I don't think that you need religion to adhere to or identify those values. They seem obvious to me. To be the kind of person who wants to hurt, oppress or reduce the humanity of others, implies that you don't really understand how temporary you are. Whatever you gain by it is wholly momentary, and your legacy will be forgotten or remembered for its horribleness.
With all of that in mind, to really get it, I would think that it'd be easier to let go of the things that wind you up. How do I do that? I enjoy challenging work, but why can't I just compartmentalize it? And for parenting, ultimately I will do the best I can, and hopefully not mess him up too much, but he will be his own human. How do I roll with that? And don't get me started on the little things that grind on me that logically I know don't matter.
How strange that our inevitable death could create purpose and joy in the time we have.
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