On the Eve of the Apocalypse

“Teach us...... that we may feel the importance of every day, of every hour, as it passes.”
~ Jane Austen

_______________________

My running thought off and on throughout the day as this task or that has arisen has been the little joke, "Oh, well, I better take care of that.  The world is ending tomorrow."

And maybe that's not really as funny as I think it is.

I will probably still laugh, though.  Until I see the first zombie or the first ancient Mayan whatever, I will probably still laugh.

As I was driving home this afternoon, I started thinking about it (too much.  as usual.), really turning it over in my mind.  What if the world were ending tomorrow?  I mean, okay, so I'm not expecting the dead to walk or a black hole to suck us into a void or a magic Mayan planet to appear (don't know what I'm talking about?  okay.  so that might not be a remarkable event, but still  CLICK HERE.)  However, if the past little while here on this spinning ball has taught us nothing else, it should have reinforced the idea that our own personal apocalypse can come at any moment brought to us by the impersonal hand of the weather or the trembling insane rage of a gunman.

So maybe we need to stop joking about it and start acting on it.

I don't mean we need to join the survivalists up in Washington state or Colorado.  I am pretty sure we will need neither tanks nor bunkers.  I don't advocate joining the massive run on bottled water and toilet tissue that is undoubtedly happening at a Wal-Mart near you.  What I'm talking about is both a lot simpler and a lot more personally costly.

Maybe we need to make sure that we don't leave business undone, things unsaid.  We never know when we will put somebody on a bus, wave goodbye to a friend, end a phone call, walk away from a meeting and it be the last time.

I'm not saying we need to "live scared," go sit on a hillside and wait for the end, or pursue other desperate acts.  I'm just saying that we need to be aware in the sweetest and best of all the possible ways that we are finite.  I do not believe we are the worse for that fact, but we do have an ending ahead somewhere, and like a person on a short vacation in a place they've always wanted to visit, we need to be sure we waste nothing of it.

I have a bracelet with the quote from Jane Austen you read at the top on it.  That, of course, is just her elegant restatement of Psalm 90:12, "So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom."  Both quotes carry the same idea, understanding that time is passing makes it, like all other limited commodities, more valuable, less likely to be wasted thoughtlessly.  Chris Rice sings it well, too, "Teach us to count the days / Teach us to make the days count / Lead us in better ways / Somehow our souls forgot / Life means so much...."

Life, then, is too short, too easily ended, to waste on crap and neglect.  If you are with somebody who you KNOW isn't a good fit or who makes you actively unhappy, get away.  If you are doing something that hurts you and that you hate, quit.  If you have something good and true, hold onto it.  If you manage to find love, grow it.  Protect it.  Maybe Hamlet (of COURSE he showed up.  can I write a full blog without him?  no....) had it right when he said, " If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all."  We can't know when our own personal "Exit," potentially of course "pursued by a bear" is going to get here.  We can, however, make sure we don't throw away the beauty and the good that waits for us before that time.

In that spirit, I just want to take a minute before the zombies and the ghost planet get here to do something I ought to do more often.  If you're my friend, and you're reading this, then know that I love you and value you.  Clip, Lord of Trees, L (my cousin/brother), T (my fellow daisy farmer), Faustus, all you other stealthy family and friends and former students who creep in cat-footed and leave without me knowing, I wish you truly well and most genuinely happy.

It's something that it shouldn't take a theoretical infestation of the undead or astronomic pyrotechnics to say.  I hope you know it no matter how bad I am at "numbering [my] days."