Cliffhanger
A doubt that crops up regularly in my head is "what if I'm too old to...?" It's a curious thought because it holds so much emotional sway over me in the moment. Yet whenever I stop to really think about it, that clout disappears and I'm left feeling a little foolish for having let it affect me.
I think that at the root of it all must be the alt-conscious awareness that I am going to die. Awareness of my own mortality places the ultimate deadline (excuse the pun) on all the projects that live in my head.
All the stories left unfinished and characters left undeveloped. All the musical skills left unmastered and songs left unwritten. All the lands, near and far, left unseen and cultures left unlived. All the beats in the typical human life we've come to expect, left unresolved.
Life seems more like a series than a movie. It's being made from season to season. Some seasons are great, some drag on and others make weird choices. And sometimes our favourite shows get cancelled and the characters we love never get to resolve their arcs. I still miss My Name Is Earl... When it comes down to it, I think I fear that I'll end on a cliffhanger.
One comfort to that is that I won't be around to huff and puff and complain how I wished Life continued for just one more season to wrap things up. The people who loved me will, as I mourn the unfinished stories of those who I love and who passed on. Something illogical, persistent and profoundly human however defies this comfort and insists on leaving a "legacy" of some kind.
Now I'm going to get kind of depressing, so you've been warned. I think that it's important to look these matters in the eyes and confront them. Meditation on the less delectable aspects of reality can be a great fertiliser for personal growth. We just have to be aware that fertiliser stinks.
This desire to leave a legacy is like a puppy’s desire to catch it's own tail. It's cute when you look at it, but you wonder what the object is. I may think you'll leave a legacy, but only because I look at it from the vantage point of an 80-year anthrocentric lifetime. I might say "Wow, my words will leave an impact for 5,000 years!" Whether 5,000 or 500,000 years - we're talking chump change in the wider perspective of Existence itself. Even the entire Earth being swallowed by Sol in millions of years is a single frame in a 3-hour Scorcese epic.
This de-dramatising of my struggles has a dual effect. It sometimes unloads the burden of being. But it can also do that so well it leaves me feeling like a ghost. It can rob existence of any weight and tinge the world in a nihilistic hue. It can also
Note: I'll continue this at a later stage, but it's nice to let it sit at a very unpleasant point. Relax, it's just TENSION.
