More than one life to lead

News flash! We DON'T get more than one life to lead. But getting the obvious out of the way...

I've been inspired to write after watching the movie "127 Hours" with James Franco, which has supplemented experiences in my life quite closely. This may be a little heavier than my usual blog posts----and yes, I realize that IS saying something---but the time has come to talk about something really real, and not just ranting and manufactured meanings.

On January 11, 2011 my dad died of Leukemia no one knew he had. And even though the circumstances of the death meant he did not experience long-term suffering, the sheer loss has affected me in ways one would only understand having lived through it. The simplest lessons, the ones we hear over and over, learning by rote, learning vicariously through the dramatized versions we love to watch in film, are the most difficult to understand without experience, the most shockingly true once you have the experience, and the easiest to forget in the shallow pool we like to call regular life.

Let's not forget:

1. We only get one life.

We get one shot to live the best way we possibly can. But it's not really just ONE shot. Let's not forget either that life is a massive conglomeration of little, tiny, insignificant shots. A span of 80- 100 years (you hope) full of opportunities to love, and opportunities to make the right decision, or to learn from a mistake that seemed like a good idea at the time.

2. Life is short.

We have no idea how long we're supposed to be here. (Hence, we hope we get a span of 80-100 years) It's the end of the world for someone every single day. You could die choking on your cheerios in the morning.

3. LOVE who you "love," don't just go through the motions.

Hopefully, we all get to learn at some point what love is and what it really means. Don't mess with people. Don't complain about your spouse too much. When they're gone, you'll be wishing for his dirty laundry on the floor, or her yelling at you to pick it up.

I suppose having someone close to you die is a little bit like starting over in life, like having a second life to lead. Things that used to be so important no longer are, and some things that were important have become even more so.

All any one of us has, ACTUALLY HAS, is our will, our choices, and our love. That's it. We worry ourselves with so many things that don't matter, and we're so dense that people have to suffer and die to wake us up. And even THEN it doesn't stick.

(In defense of us humans, though, we live in a great paradox of living in the now and planning for the future. We don't know when we're going to die, but we have to plan on living for a pretty good amount of time because we probably will in most cases. So we forget the basics, the important integral parts of our being, while planning our lives.)

None of this writing really matter, I suppose. But I hope that those of us who are at a period like this, when life has been stripped of the human planning trappings exposing the heart of what we're DOING here, can remember what's important even after the initial shock subsides.