“Tonight, go home and take a good look at yourself in the mirror. Love and appreciate what you see because that is as good as you are ever going to look.”
It is common to hear people ask if you remember where you were when you heard the Twin Towers fell, Kennedy was shot, John F. Kennedy, Jr’s plane went down, and Lennon was murdered. I, personally, remember thinking that the breaking news report of Princess Diana’s death was a poorly chosen Saturday Night Live skit. However, not to minimize these deaths, I also clearly remember when and where I was sitting when I heard my senior Humanities teacher utter the above quote to my class.
I was seventeen and throughout the year had already formed the opinion that this teacher was a bit eccentric, maybe even senile. When he told my senior class that this was as good as we were ever going to look, it solidified my thoughts on his eccentricity. After all, we were just starting our lives. Things were only going to get better after high school. But, I did go home and take a good look. And you know what? Reflecting on this quote thirty-eight years later, darned if that man wasn’t correct. The truth is that the moment we stop growing, is the moment our bodies begin dying. Physical death, however, is not what should scare us. What should frighten all of us is what dies inside us as we live.
I am no stranger to physical death. Many people I care about have died, and I have even had health scares that brought me very close to death. These events, after times of grief and sorrow, have left me more stoic about physical death and more concerned with metaphysical death. We all are going to physically die. What we need to do is worry less about that and get to the business of living!
What I failed to understand in that Humanities class was that although our bodies will weaken as we get older, our minds and experiences don’t have to follow suit. For many years after high school, I was so busy earning a college degree, establishing a career, and raising a family that much of the creativity, imagination, and wonder I had as a child slowly died within me. I was taking care of business, but not taking care of me.
To really live we need to let go of the fear of dying, the fear of failure, the fear of rejection, and the fear of being wrong. We need to foster the wonder we had as children. We need to again ask those “why” questions we hear so often from toddlers. We need to ask, and we need to listen. I fear that present day discourse has forgotten that opposing views are a good thing. Questioning is a good thing. Seeking the answers to things that don’t make sense or that you don’t understand is a good thing. Most importantly, we need to open ourselves to all the love that life brings us. Confronting death enables us to bring unlimited creativity, love, and courage to our lives.
My mother is suffering from Alzheimer’s, and as physical death comes closer for her, what she fears and mourns is the loss of her mind and memories not the fact that she is going to physically die. I have discovered a way to calm her. I ask her if she remembers the love she has for my father and the love he had for her. She always responds, yes. Then I tell her that she may forget what he looked like, where they got married, and even his name, but the love remains, and it is that strength of love that will lead them back to each other in the next life unencumbered by the physical body that is failing her now. What we need to do is just focus on the present and find joy and meaning in the moments we have before they are gone. She always smiles and asks how I became so wise. Each time I respond that I had extraordinary parents who sent me to an exceptional school that had a very wise Humanities teacher.
