I waa thinking last night about my own mortality. Fun times, I hear you say. What else does she get up to on Saturday nights?
When I was pregnant, I found that the reality of my own mortality really hit home. I mean, I have always, intellectually understood and contemplated death. It’s what morbid teenagers Do, after all. It’s what all the fuss is about with those movies, the Twilight series (that and sex with vampires, of course – or is it unconsummated sex? Probably the latter….far more compelling, as anyone who has stopped watching a sitcom the moment they get married knows).
I digress. Really, truly felt it in my bones. That was the difference. It hAd something to do with creating a new life; one that was just about to begin whilst my own is half way over, failing youth enhancing drugs coming on the PBS in the next 20 years. I thought of my nephew, Andrew, about to start law at UQ, which is where I was myseld, 17 years ago. When he was born. I thought, or more than that, I felt I was handing the torch on – as I procreated, I felt my own ascendance shift, and my own centrestage role in my life subtly, but forever, change to that of support.
That is the challenge now – to find ways to live a life more fully,before it is over.
I was thinking of my dad. He died when he was 62, after a hard life of raising 7 kids, working multiple jobs around the clock, with never a spare dollar. He went to war and suffered PTSD untreated for most of his life. He did not have a loving marriage. He must have drawn some satisfaction from knowing he was a Good Man; knowing he had done the right thing by his family. But my god – his life was over at 62. I don’t believe in an afterlife. So for him, that was it cialis super active 20mg.
I was thinking of my anxiety. I was thinking of how much of my life I have spent, literally expended, being scared. I don’t want to live my life, afraid.
What does that mean? And how to balance the responsibility of having a child to raise with what else I might want from life, so I share that centrestage rather than forfeit it all together (because no one needs a martyr for a parent. My poor dad.)
So far I have worked out that for me, it means travel. I want to see some things before I die. Not original, but true.
If I found out i had cancer, I would not waste my time finishing my novel. I would get on a plane with my man and my baby and visit – the world and the people I love, probably and preferably both at the same time. I might write, but in the way old women tell it like it is once all their peers and husbands are no longer around to judgethem – with as much chutzpah and acerbity as my little time required to get my thoughts across.
Most of all, I would live fearlessly. That means for me, looking things clearly and truthfully, and doing. Being with those I love and ditching all the rest.
So how do I balance that with the day to day fearlessness required to live a life fully when I do still need to plan ahead?
Well. I think it means not obsessing about perfecting my job, words, or life. It means doing things poorly rather than not at all. It means making lists of what I want to do and planning to do them – like travel. It does to some degree, mean earning and saving money. And it means living the examined life. Not so that one day I can look back and have no regrets. Life is too short to wait for that day of judgment (and memories are not what constitutes a life). But so thst every day or week or month I do not feel like time is slipping away.