for Laura Michaelian (1922-2013)
Earlier this week,
while stuck in gridlocked traffic on Sepulveda Boulevard through the pass here
on the west side of Los Angeles, a young deer, a buck with forked horns, ambled
out of the brush on the side of the road and walked up to the passenger window
of my car. He stared at me intently for
several moments, maybe even a minute, and clearly in my head I heard his
voice: “What are you doing with your life?”
Before you accuse me
of driving under the influence, or question how I knew it was the deer’s voice, let me just say in my
defense that although I was listening on the radio to the predictions of400,000 Ebola cases by the end of January and the report of how tumbleweeds have taken over whole neighborhoods in my drought-plagued city, I was not
hysterical or even close to falling over the edge into insanity. The only thing I can say is that the deer gave
voice to a question that has been running around in my dreams for months now: “What
are you doing with your life?”
My problem is, I keep
waiting for something. A sign, a hint, a door left opened. Is that wrong? I mean, there has to be more to existence
here in my fiftieth year than sitting in two hours of traffic each day only to
fall into bed every night wondering exactly what I accomplished that day, or
worse, what will I accomplish tomorrow, or next month, or in the years
ahead? What does it really mean if you
feel as if every part of your life is a wrong turn off the existential
highway? I think of the phrase, “in the
weeds.” Is it normal to feel, on every
level, in every situation, that I am “in the weeds?” It is not just that I am entangled in the
details and complexities of my life; those details and complexities are things
I never thought I’d be entangled in, much less have to take ownership for, but
here we are. I own the wrong life. However, I can hear a literal Greek chorus of
wise men from Plato to William Michaelian tell me that there is no “right” or
“wrong” life. There is just life. Live it, and quit your belly-aching. (Okay, that last line sounded more like my mother from Kentucky.)
We live in moments,
crystal drops of time that fall and shatter and wash away to become fragments
of memory. From dust we were created and to dust we shall return. It is so difficult, so heartbreakingly
frustrating, so profoundly vast and empty, to contemplate the fact that the
world will go on, quite efficiently, without us.
I remember a religious
studies professor I had as an undergraduate, the same man who married my wife and
me in his church 27 years ago. He told
us once that as he was driving home one evening, he came to a stop by the side
of the road with the premonition that he would die soon, and almost everyone on
earth would not care. Outside of his
family and a few friends, his death would escape notice. No tributes. No public monuments. No lasting work—a great novel or
philosophical treatise—to leave behind.
Just a quiet slipping away into the dusk. Very few of us are Shakespeare. Our reputations will not transcend the end of
our earthly bodies. We die twice, once
at our deaths, and then again when everyone alive who remembers us dies. How do we live in such a world? My teacher broke down and sobbed in his car,
and this from a Congregationalist minister not given to highly emotional
outbursts or bouts of narcissism. His
was a stoic, New England persona, and a deeply serious man trying to express
something dark and disturbing: the
absence of being in the world.
Although mortal, I am
trying with every fiber of my being not to be.
How do we live in a world where we are destined to die? We live well, with good works and
intentions. We create art and beauty, we
celebrate truth, we extend a hand, we listen, we meditate, we hold close those
we love. We get up each morning and wind
the clock of existence, day after day, so that time does not run out on
us. But it will. It always does. Time flies, and then there is darkness. But still, we try to hang on to the light.
The deer by the side
of Sepulveda Boulevard looked deep into my eyes for what seemed like an
eternity, a plasma pause in the universe of light. Then he snorted and broke the spell. He shook his head from side to side, turned,
and ambled away. I watched him pass the
other cars behind me, stopping for a moment to look at each driver. I guess he still had not found the answer he
was looking for.
