Getting There

A new dawn, a new year. It isn’t our choice when or how to leave this earth.  The point is to live fully and well.

A new dawn, a new year. Life goes on. Nothing really changes. There are things to do. On my end, deadlines must still be met, bills must still be paid, prayers must be prayed and after making my bed when I get up every morning, life must be pursued with as much joy and passion I can muster.

As every new year brings me closer to my destination — where every human being must end up — I find the need to live with more intensity. So much to do, so little time left. At 72, that is a valid thought. Although my health is the envy of my doctors, who knows what tomorrow may bring? The point is to live as though I have a deadline, which to this writer, is what has ruled my life.

The deadline. The End.  It isn’t our choice when or how to leave this earth.  The point is to live fully and well with love and laughter, passion and compassion, focused on the essentials, which, by the way, everyone defines for himself. So no judgements there.

The other night, after greeting a friend a happy new year, I alluded to the inevitability of The End and he shuddered, “Please, don’t go There.”  I apologized. I understood and did not argue.  To each his own appreciation of the inevitable.  While I love my life and won’t mind living it for a few more years, There is where new life awaits.  There is where I look forward to seeing the people I have loved who have gone ahead.  There, to me, is a place of new possibilities of eternal love, comfort and joy.

My only concern is how God chooses to get me There. Sometimes, walking on the street, I wonder if I’m still alive, if I haven’t already been hit by a truck so suddenly that I don’t know I am dead.  (I must credit that idea to an old movie I love, Heaven Can Wait, where, if I remember it right, Warren Beatty is riding a bike and gets hit by a truck but he goes on living, not realizing he is dead.)

My Dad got There through a plane crash, my Mom after a long coma, a cousin via heart attack, too many have been taken by cancer, and a friend was hit by a train. The thing is, we can’t choose our poison so I probably shouldn’t dwell on that. It is the destination that counts.

Meanwhile, I have the rest of my life to live — shortened now, with 72 years already accumulated.  A few days ago, a poem that spoke to me a few years back, made its second debut on Facebook.  I had read it and loved it before, and may have forwarded it for others to ponder.  But it is a keeper that is worth sharing with a wider audience.

The poem is called “My Soul Has a Hat” written originally in Brazilian-Portuguese by Mario de Andrade (1893-1945), a Brazilian poet, novelist, essayist and musicologist.  Please read it until the end.

I counted my years and realized that I have less time to live by, than I have lived so far.

I feel like a child who won a pack of candies: at first, he ate them with pleasure but when he realized that there was little left, he began to taste them intensely.

I have no time for endless meetings where the statutes, rules, procedures and internal regulations are discussed, knowing that nothing will be done.

I no longer have the patience to stand absurd people who, despite their chronological age, have not grown up.

My time is too short: I want the essence; my spirit is in a hurry. I do not have much candy in the package anymore.

I want to live next to humans, very realistic people who know how to laugh at their mistakes and who are not inflated by their own triumphs and who take responsibility for their actions. In this way, human dignity is defended and we live in truth and honesty.

It is the essentials that make life useful.

I want to surround myself with people who know how to touch the hearts of those whom hard strokes of life have learned to grow with sweet touches of the soul.

Yes, I’m in a hurry. I’m in a hurry to live with the intensity that only maturity can give.

I do not intend to waste any of the remaining desserts. I am sure they will be exquisite, much more than those eaten so far.

My goal is to reach the end satisfied and at peace with my loved ones and my conscience.

We have two lives and the second begins when you realize you only have one.

Here’s to our second life and what 2019 will bring. Happy New Year!