What’s the most egregious thing you’ve ever done? It can be anything, but it leaves you embarrassed or ashamed. Now think of the best thing you might have done, that you’re most proud of. What separates those two experiences or memories? Why do you think that one thing is terrible and the other is noteworthy or special?
Do we have a sense of what makes for good or positive action and what makes for negative action? I guess what I’m wrestling with now, more than anything is the idea of transience. The few years that any one person is alive but the legacy they leave either in physical things left behind, the ripples and consequences of actions they took that we as a species, planet, community are still dealing with, the children they leave behind, ideas, books, etc.
A hackneyed saying attributed to indigenous people in North America is that all actions of the tribe must be considered with the impact it will have seven generations hence. Thinking deeply about the influence/impact of a person’s actions on the lives of people you will never see nor your children or your children’s children seems a decent way to operate especially when you see the elders in your life, your family, your community start to pass away and you are left with the real knowledge that your time will come soon as well.
Rather than finding that knowledge depressing, I guess on some level I find it inspiring? It grounds one in a firm knowledge that everything and everyone they know will pass. Perhaps it would force people to think about their own impact and to question their own priorities to accumulate and focus on material goods.
Why am I writing about this? My father-in-law, who I felt close to, just passed away. Before that, my childhood friend’s father passed away, and earlier in 2020, my dog died, my dad’s business partner died, and of course we’ve all been watching the numbers of sick and dying victims of Covid. It can’t help but make you realize how little time we have, how things will always change, that we are here one minute, gone the next.
Not sure what else to say on that, but take each moment as a gift. You were nothing for billions of years, and you’ll return to that for billions more. Peace.