I don’t plan to go for a while but when the time comes, play this at my funeral.
Life
Ain’t it enough?
A friend shared this song by Old Crow Medicine Show with me years ago, and for some reason I am finding it relevant today. Maybe because it agrees with a “life is beautiful” perspective, that we are all mortal beings on an ancient planet, even though – as James Baldwin wrote – we tend to imprison ourselves by denying our mortality and focusing on other things, most of which are human constructs. It also jibes with a cosmically connected primates theme, at a time when people don’t feel particularly connected.
This isn’t my typical genre of music, but I try to be open to different styles. If you like something, that’s all that counts, I guess. This one, to me, is beautiful. Anyway, if you haven’t heard it before I hope you enjoy it.
Lyrics
Show me a river, I’ll show you an ocean
I’ll show you a castle turn into sand
For we rise and we fall, and we crash on the coastlines
And only our love will last ’til the end
Fortune is fleeting, time is deceiving
Our bodies are weak and they turn into dust
Though following blindly, but love is like lightning
It strikes only one time, and ain’t it enough?
Ain’t it enough to live by the ways of the world
To be part of the picture, whatever it’s worth?
Throw your arms around each other and love one another
For it’s only one life that we’ve got and ain’t it enough?
Surely all people are made for each other
To join in together when the days turn to dust
So let the prison walls crumble, and the borders all tumble
There is a place for us all here and ain’t it enough?
Ain’t it enough to live by the ways of the world
To be part of the picture, whatever it’s worth?
Throw your arms around each other and love one another
For it’s only one life that we’ve got and ain’t it enough?
Late in the evening, feeling the wind blow
Talk through the treetops, warm in the sun
Lying beside you, watching the moon rise
If that’s all there is, babe, ain’t it enough?
Show me a river, I’ll show you an ocean
The stars just like diamonds all shining above
Where the heavens are beaming and all the world’s dreaming
Peace everlasting and ain’t it enough?
Ain’t it enough to live by the ways of the world
To be part of the picture, whatever its worth?
Throw your arms around each other and love one another
For it’s only one life that we’ve got and ain’t it enough?
Ain’t it enough?
In the Face of Our Mortality
I thought this video on an Irish approach to death with Kevin Toolis was very well done.
“I think the best way to deal with death is not to invent a new ritual or appoint a new priest caste of bereavement counselors or medical professionals. It is to do what we’ve always done, and that’s gather together as fellow mortals in the face of our mortality and seek to bridge that moment of bereavement and loss together.”
R.I.P. Dolores O’Riordan
“You’ll always be special to me.”
Yesterday, it was reported that singer Dolores O’Riordan passed away unexpectedly at age 46. This one was a gut punch to me. I must have played The Cranberries‘ CD’s hundreds of times in college and graduate school, and I often had their songs on my playlist while traveling, including on a long, memorable bus ride through the mountains of Laos. Her voice and lyrics will be with me for a long time.
Somewhere between Phonsavan and Luang Prabang in northern Laos, 2009. I’ll long remember the breathtaking scenery, paired with the Cranberries’ music.
Gordon’s Story
We had a visitor in our Patterns of Human Mating class this week, a 70-something year-old gay man named Gordon. One of our assignments is that students must speak, informally, with older people about sex, love, marriage, long-term relationships, etc., and what they’ve learned and what advice they had for young adults. This was inspired by a conversation I had a few years ago with an 83 year-old woman named Evelyn, which I found enlightening. Other than age, we weren’t looking for people from any specific demographic, or people with any orientation. We just wanted to listen to whatever wisdom and experience is out there.
We asked around to find people to speak with, and found Gordon through a local organization that works with older adults. He kindly shared some of his life story, the progress he’s seen on acceptance on LGBT people over the course of his life, and we had a nice discussion for about 25 minutes. He then stayed for the rest of the class to hear the lecture. He even asked a few questions during the lecture, and asked if I could email him some of the studies we discussed in the class.
The Beacon in the Terrifying Darkness
“Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death–ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
One Life
“Ain’t it enough to live by the ways of the world,
To be part of the picture, whatever its worth.
Throw your arms round each other, and love one another.
For it’s only one life that we got, and ain’t it enough?”
Facing Mortality
Oliver Sacks’ essay on learning that, at age 81, he has terminal cancer is one of the most beautiful things I have read. I hope that one day I can confront my own mortality with such perspective and dignity. Life is still beautiful.
Sacks concludes:
There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate — the genetic and neural fate — of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.
I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.
Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.
Life, Big and Small
A few years ago, I attended a conference on war and health in Seattle, and one of the keynote speakers was Chris Hedges, a former journalist who had covered several conflicts around the world. After he finished his presentation, the floor was opened for questions. I’ve since forgotten much of his speech and nearly all of the Q&A session, except for the final question. Someone in the audience asked him how his life had been affected by what he had seen, and how he readjusted to a life of relative comfort in the US.
At that point, he sighed and said that one of his young children had asked him something similar when he was preparing her lunch. I’m paraphrasing, but it was something like “how can you be happy here making me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when you’ve seen so many big, important things like war around the world?” And he replied that “it’s because I’ve seen so many wars that I know how important the little things are, like making sandwiches” (again, I’m paraphrasing).
Don’t Blame the Lettuce
“When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don’t blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and argument. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.”
— Thích Nhất Hạnh
Patrick F. Clarkin, Ph.D. 