I’m left to wonder what she might have not yet known, not yet imagined of her life.
Would she have said yes? Gone along, gladly? Would there have been causes for which she would fight harder, and battles that would have been discarded more readily?
Is that not true for all of us? We don’t know the things we don’t know, and cannot predict what havoc our choices may wreak on our lives, or the lives of those around us.
Is the secret of living a satisfying life – to know what is of worth? And of course we change over time, and learn to see new things, and those new experiences shape and alter what we consider to be of worth… so how is it possible to live aligned with a vision, that by definition will curve maybe gently, maybe wildly, over time?
It seem to me that at least part of the answer to that question is to live aligned with the highest principles that can be found. Even then, if our apprehension of them is imperfect, at least they are less likely to bend and bow and wander over time.
I’ve argued at times that the single most fundamental guiding principle of the living, is LOVING. I arrive at this perspective based on the truth that loving is in its most abstract and pure form, nurturing and sustaining, even unto self effacement.
Loving is that way because it is the necessary minimum for a successful life.
Life itself is precarious and prone to rapidly deteriorating back into the fluff of the cosmos, the dirt under our soles and the dust in the wind. Many living things cannot be left alone for long without food and shelter from the elements before they perish. Maybe in this discussion it would be sufficient to speak only of humans. Loving is the force that binds us together, and which brings helpless nurselings into self sufficiency and independence, and then finally into readiness to reproduce that loving on behalf of the next generation.
Loving is proxy for living, in humans.
It is based on this equation of life with love, that I would put Loving as the first and highest principle of living.
So then, from loving, what may flow and how it may be understood and found in your life, those would be things that I would say are worth being led by. Loving – whether it is in the act of sweeping snow into the blizzard, or drying the beach… it matters not how futile it might appear – so long as the act is how you’ve found Loving in that work, and in the pursuit of that Good – you grow ever more acquainted with what Loving is to mean. Following that master, no matter where it may take you, you won’t find yourself lost or in paradox, even if it takes you to antithetical perspectives over time… from where you are, subjectively, you will have followed your principles, and been true to your purposes and compass.
So what of her… what of the life she was yet to live? What of the struggles and dramas out ahead? Would she be happy about the life she led? What of the sorrow? What of the losses? Rue those? Or maybe losses be damned. I don’t know. Is there a right answer? For her, for anyone?
I find myself missing her, and yet I never knew her, only the she that she would be many many decades later, near the end of her life, and far from the end of her importance and impact on my life, and the lives of people in my family… and yet it is dissipating, she is dissipating, and in a few more decades she will be mostly gone… her stories, her life, her mind, her sentiments, her grit, her accomplishments, her victories and her failures, her presence… her presence is waning, and that pains me for reasons I’m mostly unaware of, mostly unable to articulate.
Of course there is the reflection of death’s long and dark oblivion as it descends on all of us ever so slowly, drawing us out into the thinnest whisper of recognition… a ghost of a ghost, if known, then known in effigy, only in silent traces ever more homogenized with the echoes of every other human life that contributed to our present physical existence.
It is painful to feel this tapering off, and knowing that it will come for all I know, and for all I have known, and finally, it will come over me as well, no matter if it is decades of more after my death… my voice and my thoughts, and the light reflected from my mind will eventually all go dark in the grinding of histories rubble back into the duff that spirals around stars and black holes..
And so what? Is that a bad thing? So I miss those I have loved in life. To leave it at that would be a travesty of loving… Best that I rush to sweep up those I love into my arms and rejoice in loving they who I still have. And no matter who may be reading this, no matter how far removed from this present moment you may be – the preceding truth applies to you just as fundamentally as it does to me now.
Rejoice.
Oh Love!