Meditations on mortality
We spend our lives too young, until suddenly we're too old. Just as a single coin must constitute the tipping point from poor to rich, one breath transmutes the dreams of, "One day I'll..." into, "When did I miss my chance?"
I think I may have taken that breath recently, because somewhere along the way I became old, and I'm not sure how it happened.
On the throwaway side of things, I was brought to muse on such dark matters because I watched some thought-provoking television. On the horrendously real side, I found out that a girl I've known since I was very young is, sadly, terminally ill.
She
The girl and I had lost touch, and while I like to think of us having been proper friends once, back in our much younger days, we'd drifted far apart, as people do. I say "I'd like to think" we were friends because to me it seemed she was so magnetic, and she had so many friends, that I doubt if I really registered on her scale.
She was always so darned vital: one of those naturally petite, naturally stunning girls who was good at sports, was funny as hell, and was (quite rightly) liked by everyone. She knew about adult stuff. She was effortlessly cool, but still remembered to be kind to people like me – because she had a heck of a lot going on at home, too.
For a little while I had a childhood crush on her, because I've always been attracted to kind, witty people. If she's anything now like she was then, she's a decent person. I know she chased a dream and really made something of herself. I think she has a kid now.
She's going to die before her time, and it's absolutely fucking awful.
There's nothing anyone can do. I certainly can be of no help to her, but while there's nothing nostalgia can do in the face of creeping death, I reached out to her, and she was gracious back. She must be doing a lot of that: dealing graciously with people from years ago who pop up with useless well-wishes from afar.
I cannot imagine what she's going through. But her grace in the face of her own mortality, and something she said in our brief, polite, impotent, matter-of-fact exchange, struck a chord with me: she mentioned "maintaining years". In other words, she's on a countdown clock, and she needs to slow it as much as possible, in order to not die for as long as she can.
It's a ticking clock that she's painfully aware of, and it's a clock that nobody else has to worry about...until they start to hear it ticking. It must be very lonely, where she is right now, just her and the hands of time. As a creature whose cup runneth over with empathy, I found myself listening for my own doomsday clock, and this is what I re-realised...
Wasted time
While the world becomes quieter in one corner, the banality of life blares on in another. It's the way of things.
When people die, we're delivered a stark reminder of the fragile tether that binds us all to this place.
We promise to use our time better from now on.
To be better.
And then the bills need to be paid,
and kids need to be put to bed,
and events have to be lived through,
and smiles need to be faked.
The ephemera of life builds up and must be cleared.
After a while, the smiles aren't so fake: the glimmer and ease of not thinking about how precarious all this is returns, and the shadow of mortality only washes over when you're alone, or when the silence weighs on you in the place halfway between sleep and waking.
I think it's good to be reminded of what's important - when I'm fully awake.
To put things into perspective.
To regularly re-evaluate where I am,
where I want to be,
and who I want to be,
before my time runs out.
To think on it in terms of what I want my life to have been lived like, because that ticking clock isn't audible for so many of us until it's too damn late.
But the clock is ticking for all of us, whether we can hear it or not. Whether we're listening or not.
I had my own brush with mortality not so long ago and it scared the shit out of me. I am forever changed. But the ephemera of life builds up and must be cleared. Bills. Food. Jobs. Chores. TV. Birthdays. Normality.
Remembering
TV. Birthdays. Normality. Russian Doll.
Just like basically everyone else, I recently watched Russian Doll: a nicely self-contained single Netflix series where the main character (played by Natasha Lyonne, playing Jack Nicholson) is in an infinite loop of untimely deaths that bring her back to replay the night of her 36th birthday party, over and again. It's like Groundhog Day, but with more sex and drug abuse, and with less-wooden women.
I liked the show. It made me sad and happy all at once. It made me intensely uncomfortable, for good reason. I endorse what I see as the show's main sentiment, but we'll get to that.
The main character's experience of the repeating party in Russian Doll is supposed to come across as tiresome and lurid...and it does. I've been to those parties with those people; I've been that wild girl; it's acccurate. Now that I don't drink, I can sometimes find watching people chemically out of control a bit disquieting – perhaps because it's all a bit too close to my old address? – and while it usually doesn't bother me, the party scenes in Russian Doll clearly intend to elicit that shudder. As the show goes on there's a tonal shift from humour, to heart-rending sadness, and eventually to hope. It's well done, and thought-provoking. It's a notable flicker of those heavy halfway-dreaming thoughts in the waking world.
(As an aside, it's totally disturbing that the main character has a cigarette in her mouth, like, 90% of the time. It's something you don't see on TV these days – not like in Ghostbusters, or basically any movie from the 80's and before – and it's used to full effect in the narrative. Also, our protagonist really Player Characters the whole deductive process of what's happening to her. Nicely done. Realistic women with agency in television shows, yay!)
Through an interesting hook, compelling character acting, and clever literalisation of that bit where your counselor makes you imagine meeting your childhood self and you cry, Russian Doll examines all the gritty, unpleasant, real stuff I've been talking about above. The show asks the viewer to consider whether they're spending their time, and their life, well – and quite literally questions the pursuit of happiness as the goal of life.
Paraphrased, the main message of the show (fully endorsed by me) is that connection is more important than sensation. Because togetherness may not promise happiness, but it does mean that we don't have to be unhappy alone. The best way to handle what happens to you is to understand it, not to control it, or to blot it out.
Face life, head on. Do it, now.
Tick tock
Thus, I've been questioning my own methodology for the pursuit of happiness. I know I'm not where I want to be in a lot of ways, and I've awoken with lines on my face to cover, lines on my ledger to strike out, and a success trap of my own making to climb out of. I, mercifully, can't yet hear the ticking of my mortality clock, so there's still some time, even with all that's happened. I don't have a deadline yet. I'm lucky. Some aren't so lucky.
I've started taking steps towards the life I want, and I can't wait until I can tell you all about it... For the moment, I urge you to take the questions I've been gifted by all of the above and turn them to your looking glass, as I did.
What is happiness? Like, really, the kind where if you suddenly were about to die, you'd think you did it all okay, actually. That kind.
Do you have the life you want? If not, what change do you want to see in your life?
What steps can you take to get there?
Who do you want to be? How do you want to have lived?
If you stay on your current path, will you wake up and realise one day that you've become old? Will you regret what you've done with all your wasted time? Will you want to take back that tipping-point breath?
We still can.
Love always,
Fay
xXx