Memento Mori
Juggling 103
We have a motto in our house, one of several that run throughout the years like a harmonic motif. Though my teens might discreetly shade an eye roll when I say it, even my seven-year old can repeat it:
Life is very short and goes by very fast.
I don’t expect my kids to understand in the same guttural way that I do as an adult, but I repeat it anyway because I believe it is one of the single most important keys to a meaningful life. Without accepting that death is inevitable, we cannot truly come alive.
Death means that there is no winning the game. This life will end, and we will all leave so many wonderful things unaccomplished. We will not read all the books, plant all the gardens, understand all the philosophy. We won’t make all the money, create all the art, or wrestle with all the theology.
We can try, of course. Bu we will fail, and the good that we will choose to do will leave other good undone.
We have to know the order of things. And by this, I’m not referencing any external bucket list of “good, true, and beautiful” to fall back on. I’m talking about the order of things necessary so that when we come to the end of our lives, we can say honestly, with a clean conscience, that we did the best we could with what we had. This true order of things is visceral and personal, and no one can write it for us. In fact, if they do, it will be the epitaph we did not wish for, the eulogy we would weep to have spoken over our freshly turned graves.
As we’ve said before, we’re going to drop balls, both in educating our children and in life in general. We won’t necessarily know when it’s going to happen. Most of the time, it’s not even possible to control which balls fall.
What we can do is choose which balls to pick back up first. Remembering that it will all be over long before we’re ready, we can name the particular hierarchies of our lives.
These are deep waters, and very easy to slip into accidental dishonesty about. Sometimes, we think we know the right answer, the one we’re expected to give. A lot of times, we realize that the answer that we want to give isn’t the one we’d give reflexively.
This has been a bit heavy on theory, but there is a very practical aspect of the whole “remember that thou, too, shalt die” thing. Knowing our top priorities can help us create actionable plans for living out our values when life throws us curve balls.
So. Be honest, and remember we’re going to die. Cool.
Next week, we’ll swing hard into the practical.
In all thy works remember thy last end, and thou shalt never sin.
~Sirach 7:40