An Examined Life

The sincere poem from the woman with inoperable cancer reminds me once again that I shouldn’t put off that life I’ve always said I wanted. I should no longer complain about the petty issues of my day. Why? Because, just like her, I am going to die – hopefully later than sooner, but ultimately its inevitable.

I watched a movie about a sad, lonely woman who discovers she has a month to live. She takes her severance pay (oh yah, she also loses her job and boyfriend on that same day), and rents a loft over looking the Hudson River. Then she maxes her credit cards filling her place with all the stuff she apparently always wanted. Then she starts having sex with the delivery guy, then with the pizza delivery girl, and then (this is when we turned off the movie) with both of them.

I don’t think this is as enlightened as the back of the DVD case suggested. The freedom of choice and expression motivated by one’s imminent demise may simply be a realization of a limit to the consequence of one’s actions. In the case of the young woman in the movie, she’ll be gone before the credit card bills to come in, or the genital warts appear.

It’s all fine for our poet friend to encourage us to pursue that career that “doesn’t seem to make sense” – she won’t be around to help with the rent payments or the kid’s new shoes.

The rest of us who don’t yet know our ‘best before’ date, we have to live a life that includes responsibility. We have to count the costs. The trick then, regardless of who we are or the position we have,  is not to live assuming we’ll be hit by a beer truck on the way home, but to live knowing that every decision and choice we make is significant and has impact – for us, and for those around us.