Nobody Ever Died Wishing They'd Watched More TV
Yesterday at lunch a woman was killed in front of my office when a large flatbed truck sideswiped her and then ran over her with its rear wheels. This all happened in front of the busy office lunchtime crowd on the streets of Montreal, just below my window. And it has been haunting me ever since.
I am not haunted by seeing this accident (which could not have been very pleasant either) but it was one of those moments when mortality blows in your ear to remember that it is a bedfellow in this dream of life whether you remember it is there or not. This woman did not wake up yesterday morning thinking that this would be the final shower and breakfast that she would ever have. And the driver of that truck also didn’t wake up that morning thinking that he was going to take someone’s life that day. And he has ended up taking his own as well. From the reports, it appears that this was an accident and nothing more. The man is not going to a jail except for the one that will inevitably be constructed in his own mind.
The woman was a professional in her early thirties, so life was really just beginning. How many years had she sacrificed in pursuit of a goal that will never be reached? How many times did she put off that thrill of the here-and-now for the foundations of later security? How many days of sitting around doing nothing were spent saving for a vacation that will never come? How many items on her life’s “to-do” list will go without that checkmark. How many hours did she spend in a gym working on a body that will never show itself again? How many times did she skip the dessert to wear a smaller dress?
I was once told that a sign of maturity is the acceptance of delayed gratification. This is of course a part of the gradual understanding of what the future actually meant that I came to know as I grew older. I remember being a kid of about 12 thinking that when the year 2000 hit I would be 26…Old Old Old was all I could think. I wasn’t even able to imagine myself as a 26 year old person (and whatever I did imagine certainly was not what actually happened). And then when I originally graduated from university at 22, I continued working in a bar because it was fun and exciting. I gave no thought to the minimal opportunities that job held for the future. A bartender at 22 is fun; a bartender at 40 can be a bit depressing.
My moment of “delayed gratification” came when I decided that I needed some sort of career. This was a paradigm shift from my previous perspective on life and is a marker of a change in who I was. You lead one life if you believe (and can comprehend all that is involved) that you will live to be 100 and you lead quite a different one if you don’t plan on hitting that retirement age.
But we are all involved in this lottery. There is no escape from it. So we plan for a future that may never happen. We deny ourselves pleasure and enjoyment in the moment in pursuit of a dream that may never materialize. For we also see that without these steps and preparations, if the lottery gives us many years, our failures now to prepare will undeniably hurt later on. And so I gave in to it all. I have moved on from childhood, to adolescence, to adultescence, to adulthood. And it is scary. I don’t want to go through all of this for it to end before the payday. I don’t want to prepare for eight years to race in the Olympics only to disqualify myself in the first gate. I don’t want to lose.
But Mortality isn’t playing the game with me; he’s just keeping time.
I am not haunted by seeing this accident (which could not have been very pleasant either) but it was one of those moments when mortality blows in your ear to remember that it is a bedfellow in this dream of life whether you remember it is there or not. This woman did not wake up yesterday morning thinking that this would be the final shower and breakfast that she would ever have. And the driver of that truck also didn’t wake up that morning thinking that he was going to take someone’s life that day. And he has ended up taking his own as well. From the reports, it appears that this was an accident and nothing more. The man is not going to a jail except for the one that will inevitably be constructed in his own mind.
The woman was a professional in her early thirties, so life was really just beginning. How many years had she sacrificed in pursuit of a goal that will never be reached? How many times did she put off that thrill of the here-and-now for the foundations of later security? How many days of sitting around doing nothing were spent saving for a vacation that will never come? How many items on her life’s “to-do” list will go without that checkmark. How many hours did she spend in a gym working on a body that will never show itself again? How many times did she skip the dessert to wear a smaller dress?
I was once told that a sign of maturity is the acceptance of delayed gratification. This is of course a part of the gradual understanding of what the future actually meant that I came to know as I grew older. I remember being a kid of about 12 thinking that when the year 2000 hit I would be 26…Old Old Old was all I could think. I wasn’t even able to imagine myself as a 26 year old person (and whatever I did imagine certainly was not what actually happened). And then when I originally graduated from university at 22, I continued working in a bar because it was fun and exciting. I gave no thought to the minimal opportunities that job held for the future. A bartender at 22 is fun; a bartender at 40 can be a bit depressing.
My moment of “delayed gratification” came when I decided that I needed some sort of career. This was a paradigm shift from my previous perspective on life and is a marker of a change in who I was. You lead one life if you believe (and can comprehend all that is involved) that you will live to be 100 and you lead quite a different one if you don’t plan on hitting that retirement age.
But we are all involved in this lottery. There is no escape from it. So we plan for a future that may never happen. We deny ourselves pleasure and enjoyment in the moment in pursuit of a dream that may never materialize. For we also see that without these steps and preparations, if the lottery gives us many years, our failures now to prepare will undeniably hurt later on. And so I gave in to it all. I have moved on from childhood, to adolescence, to adultescence, to adulthood. And it is scary. I don’t want to go through all of this for it to end before the payday. I don’t want to prepare for eight years to race in the Olympics only to disqualify myself in the first gate. I don’t want to lose.
But Mortality isn’t playing the game with me; he’s just keeping time.
posted by Rye at 11:47 a.m.
4 Comments:
OMG dude that is so true. Oh by the way I want to give you this link since you like sam the eagle so much. I hope it brightens your day.http://movies.go.com/muppets/index?CMP=BAC-NM1499881932
Thank Mikey - great link!
Where is the line between the here and now and the futures we dream about? Bugger me if I have an answer, but the question you raise is one that we all need in front of us all the time.
Hopefully without someone dying to remind us.
Thanks
R
Yeah, I was downtown when that happened too. It was the same day I saw the rotting leg guy. Is the lesson "prudence" or "seize the day"? I keep going back and forth.
Someone told me that same thing about maturity once. I think there is value in learning how to delay gratification. But I don't think it is the defining skill of maturity.
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